DEAD RECKONING
Somewhere between the start of the Western New Year and the Eastern one, a long time friend sent a poignant email: “Hi. Took Frisky to the vet yesterday for her annual check up and shots. … He said that the enlarged heart was not unusual for an "old" dog. I'm having trouble thinking of Frisky as "old"; she'll always be a puppy to me. I asked him how long she would live and he said it depended on how long her parents lived, but probably 12-14 years. I have been soooo sad ever since, as she is already 11. … I know you understand how I feel. Please send me some good Buddhist advice.”
Oh my. An old year was dying out, a new one rushing in, the rooster giving way to the dog,January to February, the earth spinning, the moon changing, and this Buddha 911 call for Help! was a sharp echo of the Buddha’s greatest sound byte: impermanence. All of life is suffering, he declared as his First Noble Truth, his Second all that suffering is essentially our resistance to flux, our wanting things to stand still.
Frankly, we’ve engineered a lot to suit our fears and fantasies but not this, and I bet it won’t happen anytime soon. Nature abhors stasis as much as a vacuum: it is the great conveyor belt on which everything is just passing. One day I have a grandmother, one day a grand nephew. One cousin graduates from schoolbooks to a law office, another from good health to chemotherapy, my sister from a house to an apartment, a friend changes cities. Nothing stays the same, nothing lasts and all the money in Manhattan can’t stop the cosmos from moving your cheese.
That doesn’t mean we don’t try to stop it. We’ve got a Botox battalion busy freeze framing faces, World plastic surgical War One on crow’s feet, an entire home depot of engineered building material touted to never deteriorate, gas chambers to make tomatoes the same every season and, smile!, a bazillion dollar photo industry dedicated to freeze framing our happy moments. What can you say about those obituaries for octogenarians garnished with photos of 40 somethings? Or religions which take comfort in a sun that seems to stay the same while that irascible moon has recurring phases? Or those stuck thinking of old dogs as puppies? I’m guilty too. No matter how old I got my grandmother always referred to me as “that child” and lately I hear myself doing the same to my godchildren and nephews. In my mind they’re 10 and I’m 40, even though they long ago passed their 30th birthdays.
The absurd irony of all our suffering over these passages is that we are doing it in the midst of a throw away, new novel next big thing world. Our society so thrives on change and its speed, we complain bitterly when things come to a standstill and write laws to forbid loitering. We worship innovation, renovation, vacation for changes of scenery. Thursday is the new Friday, 60 the new 40, Yahoo the new Western Union, China the new superpower, AutoPay the new checkbook and Ipod the new TV/telephone/computer/GPS/ stereo/ radio/walkman/CD/DVD/MP3/VCR. We rush happily onward, the crying only from bottom liners drowned by the next wave. The miraculous phonograph becomes the luxurious stereo system becomes the compact CD player becomes the long playing DVD machine becomes the mini Ipod becomes the wireless cell phone and when those captains of the universe vested in the new big thing find themselves displaced by the admirals of the next big thing out come law suits, lobbying, No Fair! protests and cell phone contracts stronger than Gorilla glue.
The weird part of our trying to hang on is that we are totally dependent on an economy vehemently dedicated to impermanence. We have replaced shoemakers, milliners and craftsmen with plastic, particleboard and slapdash. We buy disposable battery operated toothbrushes and throwaway cameras. We have starter jobs, starter houses, starter marriages. We lease cars to change every year and now we have H&M, the Ikea of clothing, pushing deliberately disposable chic. The moment—the girl of the moment, the restaurant of the moment, the look—is everything and of course the market will produce a new moment—a new face, a new fusion food, a new way to be “with it”-- momentarily. Faster and faster, now you see it now you don’t. Here today gone tomorrow –or gone today of course if it’s chocolate.
What a hip guy he was, the Buddha, way back then pitching nowness, live in the moment, don’t hang on, go with the flow. This is in fact the recipe for his Third Noble Truth: the cessation of suffering. But upgrading and updating and upscaling do not seem to be on the must-do list that is the Fourth Noble Truth, the Path to the goal of no suffering. No. Here comes the disconnect. When the Buddha spoke of flux and letting go, he was pointing out that we ourselves are disposable items. We are transients on a stopover, hapless victims of planned obsolescence who are headed for the scrap heap. Father Time is in cahoots with Mother Nature, numbering our days. Because none of us know until it’s called when our number’s up, all of us need to live each moment as though it were our last. My mother postponed taking trips and doing things for herself until her children were in college and died at 50 a year after we were. Equating yourself with, say, a new car model, a hit movie or a flashlight battery that you know is not built to last forever, that’s the Be Here Now.
To become familiar with being temporary, everyday a dharma practitioner says: “My life is like a water bubble: it could burst at any moment so right now I must make it meaningful.” A monk/lama turns his water offering bowl over every night in case he doesn’t wake up. A guru never takes a vacation or a break because every second could be the last precious chance to be of benefit. The teaching is to live as though your hair has just caught fire.
The Victorians, the Catholics and the Christian missionaries who first encountered Buddhism could not forgive its clear-eyed acknowledgment of death, disdaining it for being morbidly preoccupied with the gloom of doom. Why then, I ask you, is His Holiness the Dalai Lama always smiling? And my teacher, all the teachers and serious practitioners? Because, I bet, the acceptance of impermanence is the end of suffering. When you stop wanting life to be otherwise you start to enjoy it for what it is. Accepting things for what they are, not what you want them to be, that’s the letting go. It’s a terrific diet that sheds all that stored stress—fear, longing, anger, resistance-- making you naturally lighten up.
Haven’t you noticed how people who know they are dying get quickly focused and shift priorities, like cancer stricken Marvella Bayh publicly imploring everyone to “stop and smell the roses.” Like these sentiments which arrived today in one of those chain emails (sent by a Thai friend from Bangkok!). They are supposedly written by an 83-year-old woman:
“I'm sitting in the yard and admiring the view without fussing about the weeds in the garden. I'm spending more time with my family and friends. I'm not ‘saving’ anything; we use our good china and crystal for every special event such as losing a pound, getting the sink unstopped, or the first Amaryllis blossom. I'm not saving my good perfume for special parties, but wearing it for clerks in the hardware store and tellers at the bank. ‘Someday’ and ‘one of these days’ are losing their grip on my
vocabulary. If it's worth seeing or hearing or doing, I want to see and hear and do it now. It's those little things left undone that would make me angry if I knew my hours were limited. Angry because I hadn't written certain letters that I intended to write one of these days. Angry and sorry that I didn't tell my husband and parents often enough how much I truly love them. I'm trying very hard not to put off, hold back, or save anything that would add laughter and luster to our lives. And every morning when I open my eyes, I tell myself it is special.”
When you live like you’re dying, not holding back or putting off, that’s being in the moment. The teaching example is the woman who, being chased over the edge of a cliff by a hungry tiger, spots a berry blooming in the brush and takes the time to savor it before she dives. Certainly companionship and love from others are to be savored as Time chases us toward our own abyss. Yet I know people who adamantly refuse to get a dog for the single reason that they are somehow absolutely sure it will die before they do. Totally unwilling to suffer the loss of laughter and luster, they forbid themselves years of having it to revel in—the joyous face licks and tail wags, that miraculous eye communication of perfect understanding that led Charles Schultz to memorialize his dog as Snoopy. Death denied is life not lived--no end to suffering. Better the example of a friend who every January gorges wildly on the tiny cold water shrimp freshly fished until she is so sated she’s ready to move on to the finds of February.
Decades ago, when my beagle Thoreau, my sole companion, died young and abruptly I thought my world collapsed. I lay abed crying, unable to go on. A week passed, a friend phoned: “Get up! I’ve got a special present for you,” she said, “a ten-week-old wirehaired dachshund and you’re just gonna love him.” So the unexpected departure of the quiet Thoreau created the space for the unexpected arrival of the extraordinary world winner Bogie who became the unexpected catalyst for my friend to overcome her fear of dogs and get Frisky who brought her family such a gift of delight they unexpectedly got addicted to her and now she is old and that hurts because soon she will disappear and what will come into that space nobody knows but you can’t stop the world and get off. You have to go with the flow.
Our lives are shaggy dog stories that go on and on with ever changing chapters of characters and experiences and years—all of which we could not have lived without, all of which indelibly mark us like an address to where we’re next headed. And that dam we want to put on the current of events pushing us along, that is the truth of suffering.
Technorati Tags: Dead Reckoning. Mourning Pets. Yours In The Dharma. Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist
Oh my. An old year was dying out, a new one rushing in, the rooster giving way to the dog,January to February, the earth spinning, the moon changing, and this Buddha 911 call for Help! was a sharp echo of the Buddha’s greatest sound byte: impermanence. All of life is suffering, he declared as his First Noble Truth, his Second all that suffering is essentially our resistance to flux, our wanting things to stand still.
Frankly, we’ve engineered a lot to suit our fears and fantasies but not this, and I bet it won’t happen anytime soon. Nature abhors stasis as much as a vacuum: it is the great conveyor belt on which everything is just passing. One day I have a grandmother, one day a grand nephew. One cousin graduates from schoolbooks to a law office, another from good health to chemotherapy, my sister from a house to an apartment, a friend changes cities. Nothing stays the same, nothing lasts and all the money in Manhattan can’t stop the cosmos from moving your cheese.
That doesn’t mean we don’t try to stop it. We’ve got a Botox battalion busy freeze framing faces, World plastic surgical War One on crow’s feet, an entire home depot of engineered building material touted to never deteriorate, gas chambers to make tomatoes the same every season and, smile!, a bazillion dollar photo industry dedicated to freeze framing our happy moments. What can you say about those obituaries for octogenarians garnished with photos of 40 somethings? Or religions which take comfort in a sun that seems to stay the same while that irascible moon has recurring phases? Or those stuck thinking of old dogs as puppies? I’m guilty too. No matter how old I got my grandmother always referred to me as “that child” and lately I hear myself doing the same to my godchildren and nephews. In my mind they’re 10 and I’m 40, even though they long ago passed their 30th birthdays.
The absurd irony of all our suffering over these passages is that we are doing it in the midst of a throw away, new novel next big thing world. Our society so thrives on change and its speed, we complain bitterly when things come to a standstill and write laws to forbid loitering. We worship innovation, renovation, vacation for changes of scenery. Thursday is the new Friday, 60 the new 40, Yahoo the new Western Union, China the new superpower, AutoPay the new checkbook and Ipod the new TV/telephone/computer/GPS/ stereo/ radio/walkman/CD/DVD/MP3/VCR. We rush happily onward, the crying only from bottom liners drowned by the next wave. The miraculous phonograph becomes the luxurious stereo system becomes the compact CD player becomes the long playing DVD machine becomes the mini Ipod becomes the wireless cell phone and when those captains of the universe vested in the new big thing find themselves displaced by the admirals of the next big thing out come law suits, lobbying, No Fair! protests and cell phone contracts stronger than Gorilla glue.
The weird part of our trying to hang on is that we are totally dependent on an economy vehemently dedicated to impermanence. We have replaced shoemakers, milliners and craftsmen with plastic, particleboard and slapdash. We buy disposable battery operated toothbrushes and throwaway cameras. We have starter jobs, starter houses, starter marriages. We lease cars to change every year and now we have H&M, the Ikea of clothing, pushing deliberately disposable chic. The moment—the girl of the moment, the restaurant of the moment, the look—is everything and of course the market will produce a new moment—a new face, a new fusion food, a new way to be “with it”-- momentarily. Faster and faster, now you see it now you don’t. Here today gone tomorrow –or gone today of course if it’s chocolate.
What a hip guy he was, the Buddha, way back then pitching nowness, live in the moment, don’t hang on, go with the flow. This is in fact the recipe for his Third Noble Truth: the cessation of suffering. But upgrading and updating and upscaling do not seem to be on the must-do list that is the Fourth Noble Truth, the Path to the goal of no suffering. No. Here comes the disconnect. When the Buddha spoke of flux and letting go, he was pointing out that we ourselves are disposable items. We are transients on a stopover, hapless victims of planned obsolescence who are headed for the scrap heap. Father Time is in cahoots with Mother Nature, numbering our days. Because none of us know until it’s called when our number’s up, all of us need to live each moment as though it were our last. My mother postponed taking trips and doing things for herself until her children were in college and died at 50 a year after we were. Equating yourself with, say, a new car model, a hit movie or a flashlight battery that you know is not built to last forever, that’s the Be Here Now.
To become familiar with being temporary, everyday a dharma practitioner says: “My life is like a water bubble: it could burst at any moment so right now I must make it meaningful.” A monk/lama turns his water offering bowl over every night in case he doesn’t wake up. A guru never takes a vacation or a break because every second could be the last precious chance to be of benefit. The teaching is to live as though your hair has just caught fire.
The Victorians, the Catholics and the Christian missionaries who first encountered Buddhism could not forgive its clear-eyed acknowledgment of death, disdaining it for being morbidly preoccupied with the gloom of doom. Why then, I ask you, is His Holiness the Dalai Lama always smiling? And my teacher, all the teachers and serious practitioners? Because, I bet, the acceptance of impermanence is the end of suffering. When you stop wanting life to be otherwise you start to enjoy it for what it is. Accepting things for what they are, not what you want them to be, that’s the letting go. It’s a terrific diet that sheds all that stored stress—fear, longing, anger, resistance-- making you naturally lighten up.
Haven’t you noticed how people who know they are dying get quickly focused and shift priorities, like cancer stricken Marvella Bayh publicly imploring everyone to “stop and smell the roses.” Like these sentiments which arrived today in one of those chain emails (sent by a Thai friend from Bangkok!). They are supposedly written by an 83-year-old woman:
“I'm sitting in the yard and admiring the view without fussing about the weeds in the garden. I'm spending more time with my family and friends. I'm not ‘saving’ anything; we use our good china and crystal for every special event such as losing a pound, getting the sink unstopped, or the first Amaryllis blossom. I'm not saving my good perfume for special parties, but wearing it for clerks in the hardware store and tellers at the bank. ‘Someday’ and ‘one of these days’ are losing their grip on my
vocabulary. If it's worth seeing or hearing or doing, I want to see and hear and do it now. It's those little things left undone that would make me angry if I knew my hours were limited. Angry because I hadn't written certain letters that I intended to write one of these days. Angry and sorry that I didn't tell my husband and parents often enough how much I truly love them. I'm trying very hard not to put off, hold back, or save anything that would add laughter and luster to our lives. And every morning when I open my eyes, I tell myself it is special.”
When you live like you’re dying, not holding back or putting off, that’s being in the moment. The teaching example is the woman who, being chased over the edge of a cliff by a hungry tiger, spots a berry blooming in the brush and takes the time to savor it before she dives. Certainly companionship and love from others are to be savored as Time chases us toward our own abyss. Yet I know people who adamantly refuse to get a dog for the single reason that they are somehow absolutely sure it will die before they do. Totally unwilling to suffer the loss of laughter and luster, they forbid themselves years of having it to revel in—the joyous face licks and tail wags, that miraculous eye communication of perfect understanding that led Charles Schultz to memorialize his dog as Snoopy. Death denied is life not lived--no end to suffering. Better the example of a friend who every January gorges wildly on the tiny cold water shrimp freshly fished until she is so sated she’s ready to move on to the finds of February.
Decades ago, when my beagle Thoreau, my sole companion, died young and abruptly I thought my world collapsed. I lay abed crying, unable to go on. A week passed, a friend phoned: “Get up! I’ve got a special present for you,” she said, “a ten-week-old wirehaired dachshund and you’re just gonna love him.” So the unexpected departure of the quiet Thoreau created the space for the unexpected arrival of the extraordinary world winner Bogie who became the unexpected catalyst for my friend to overcome her fear of dogs and get Frisky who brought her family such a gift of delight they unexpectedly got addicted to her and now she is old and that hurts because soon she will disappear and what will come into that space nobody knows but you can’t stop the world and get off. You have to go with the flow.
Our lives are shaggy dog stories that go on and on with ever changing chapters of characters and experiences and years—all of which we could not have lived without, all of which indelibly mark us like an address to where we’re next headed. And that dam we want to put on the current of events pushing us along, that is the truth of suffering.
Technorati Tags: Dead Reckoning. Mourning Pets. Yours In The Dharma. Sandy Garson, Dharma, Buddhist
posted by Sandy Garson @ 11:23 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home