When the new year loomed near I knew that something was going to happen this year. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I just had this feeling that something was going to happen. Something felt different.
Its an interesting experience to slice someone out of your life. If you want to do it properly you need to slice out everyone else who is closely tied to them, which can be quite a large section of one’s social circle. Needless to say, I was expecting to have a bad time of it. Surprisingly, the majority of the journey so far has been… well, not intending to trivialise it at all, generally it has been neither great nor terrible. It just is.
Thats not to say I don’t wish things were different, rather that I don’t indulge in the thought at all. Instead I put my energy into other things that are important to me.
A few years ago I would not have been able to say or do that. And there is one thing that I can thank for what I consider to be an incredible change. The Dharma.
Kusala Bikshu of www.urbandharma.org explains the difference between pain and suffering:
“Suffering is what happens when you don’t want to have the pain. Suffering happens if you have a Ford and want a Honda. Suffering happens if you are married and don’t want to be. Suffering is what happens when you’re not married and you want to be. Suffering happens if things are different than they are supposed to be.”
Essentially, “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional”. It is a waste of time and energy to dwell on a negative aspect of your life, or on one that is in the past.
This teaching I have to thank for my current life experience.
I somehow found some Oprah Winfrey on my TV the other day. cough. It was some special called “The Secret”. Well, I saw about 15 minutes of it before I found my remote and turned that stuff off. It was an interesting 15 minutes. Essentially their revolutionary secret to living a happy and successful life was to aim for what you want - not to dwell on the dissatisfactions you have with your current situation, but be grateful for the positive parts of it, and focus on the way you want your life to be. Wow. Yeah. Thats a huge secret, eh? Something that really requires you to buy their books and CDs and seminars to understand. Its a secret, after all.
Much of what they said echoed the monks at Nan Tien Temple when I attended a monastic retreat last year. A message from the discipline master while we were eating our meals in silence:
“Cultivate a grateful heart to fully appreciate and enjoy what you have in this moment. Think of all the people who have worked hard to bring just a single grain of rice to your bowl - planting it, growing it, harvesting, cleaning it, packaging, shipping, buying, cooking, serving it. Appreciate every grain of rice you eat - so many people do not have enough to eat each day.”
A grateful heart, something I have yet to master. But I think something deep in me keeps pulling me towards it, without me even deliberately pursuing it. Meditation is a large part of Buddhist practice, but I have found that my motivation for sitting meditation is easily shaken, and slow walking meditation never really clicked with me.
My stay at Nan Tien introduced me to two things - bowing and brisk walking meditation. Brisk walking meditation I enjoyed immensely. But its the bowing that draws me. I wake up and feel the desire to bow. Through the day I want to bow. Before I go to bed I want to bow. When it is not appropriate for me to bow in reality, I bow in my mind.
Bowing meditation seems like an unusual practice in a western society which no longer bows. The first few times I bowed I just felt weird - my body doing something that didn’t really have any instinctive meaning. But by the end of the week-long retreat, something had clicked in me and it started to feel natural. The Venerable who taught meditation (forgive me Fa-Shih, I’ve forgotten your name) said that bowing brings forth a grateful mind. It helps to let go of the ego, and open the heart.
Maybe something in me knows that I need to work on my grateful mind and open heart, and so is drawn to bow so often. Those who believe in rebirth might claim that it is my karma encouraging me to bow. All I know is that when I bow to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, when I bow to the universe, my loved ones - even to people I dislike - and when I bow in appreciation of all that I have, I feel calmer, happier, grounded.
I’m heading back to Nan Tien this weekend to reconnect with that awesome retreat experience from last year. I’ll bring back some cool photos for y’all 