Take A Rinpoche to Lunch
My theory of relativity has always been that there will never be unemployment for psychologists or psychiatrists as long as there are families. Blood is so much thicker than brains that the dysfunction and dreadfulness of relatives metastasize more mightily than cancer. And there really aren’t anti-inflammatories for the deep down damage they inflict—often because we don’t even realize its effect. We just accept the life and people handed to us at birth as standard issue normal.
It took me decades to discover the answer to the obvious question: Doesn't everybody live like this? is no, and how profoundly crippled I had become from living in an exceptional pack of cannibals who, like lobsters trapped, were accustomed to feeding off the softest among them in order to survive. Underneath all their bravado and money was an insidious insecurity that made them what Ross Perot once called “that giant sucking sound.” Unleashing their pain in grabbing, complaint and demands, they destroyed my mother and came for me. To survive, I had to break away, cutting off the past to have a future.
So I freaked out when the hungriest ghost in the horde emailed out of nowhere that she was coming to town and perhaps we could meet for lunch or something. Everything in me wanted to delete the message and go on as I have managed surprisingly well to do by shunting this individual to the boondocks of my world. I didn’t want the nasty past dredged up and spilled all over my nice clean life to debilitate me the way it used to. I reckoned she wanted something—something like me to come back and take care of her—and I had finally learned to stop giving to a perennial taker. As a friend likes to say: “Have you learned the word No yet?” But I also didn’t want to say: “No, I don’t want to see you”, and thus supersize her cherished image of me as a cold-hearted bitch who done her wrong. Poor innocent little her who never did anything. Exactly.
I turned off the computer so I wouldn’t have to see the message or deal with it, but of course it was there again in the morning and all day to boot. The invitation caging me in a dilemma seemed an affront and I began to resent its intrusion into my life. I kept saying: “Oh shit” like a mantra. Oh shit, it wasn’t going to go away. Oh shit, I had to deal with it. Oh shit, how could she? Oh shit, I wanted the well capped with cement.
It took a worrisome day or two for Duh to kick in. I was staring at the computer screen trying not to be angry about the email still being there when the voice inside me said: Got Dharma? Duh! I went to my shrine and looked up at the big picture of Karmapa I keep above it. “Karmapa chenno,” I murmured a few times. I looked at the picture of my own teacher and Duh! hit me again. If I was supposed to learn from my teacher by following his example, what I needed to do was imagine myself as him. “What would Rinpoche do?”
The answer was of course a no-brainer. Rinpoche smiles like the sun equally on everything and everyone, without judgment or favor. He nods enthusiastically, he says: “Yes.” He does not turn people away because of what they have done or who they are. He is hopeful, peaceful, forgiving. He is nonstick Teflon personified. “Resistance to what is happening,” his dharma brother Trungpa Rinpoche used to say, “takes far more energy and effort than going with the flow. That should tell you it’s wrong.”
I went back to the computer feeling relieved. I sat up straight and typed back, yes I would meet for lunch, certainly. I added the time and place best for me and hit: Send. Off Rinpoche went into the Dharmakaya. It was easy.
When the chosen midday approached, my stomach started to churn. I wasn’t sure this was going to be easy at all. I had to stop my office work to sit down and have a little heart to heart with myself, reminding me this was no longer about me. “Karmapa chenno.” There was no me. The Dharma keeps trying to get it through my mind there is no one home in this temporary body, no self in its Lego-like compendium of assembled parts. Since there is no me, there is nobody this particularly pernicious relative could hurt. I get the logic and can explain it all perfectly to you, but in turbulent moments I can fail to just plain get it. I had to work really hard to point out to myself that I had a cover. I was going to lunch in disguise, behind a mask. In fact I was not going to lunch at all. “Thrangu Rinpoche is going to lunch,” I told myself. “Thrangu Rinpoche is going to lunch with her, not you.”
And so Rinpoche went to lunch. His welcome was polite and smiley. He showed no negativity, no reaction at all when presented with a surprise third party guest, a new boyfriend in the chain of yet another. He just said: “Hello.” It was very smooth and civil. Rinpoche kept the conversation focused on the two seated across from him, asking how they were and how they met and what they planned to do in town. Learning of an interest in cooking, Rinpoche brightened and listened to a lot of talk about grilling and marinades. In no time at all, the bill was plunked on the table. And a credit card from the far side put on top of it. Thank you’s were exchanged and moments later it ended with: “Have a nice afternoon. The stores are that way.” No angst, no bitter aftertaste, no emotional acid reflux. I couldn’t believe it. I got off that easy.
That’s why I now recommend to all my Dharma friends afflicted by the madness of family matters, impersonate your Rinpoche. "No situation," it's said, "can become favorable until one is able to adapt to it and does not wear herself out with mistaken resistance."
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
Click here to request Sandy Garson for reprint permission.
Yours In The Dharma 2001-2010, Sandy Garson Copyright 2001-2010 Sandy Garson
It took me decades to discover the answer to the obvious question: Doesn't everybody live like this? is no, and how profoundly crippled I had become from living in an exceptional pack of cannibals who, like lobsters trapped, were accustomed to feeding off the softest among them in order to survive. Underneath all their bravado and money was an insidious insecurity that made them what Ross Perot once called “that giant sucking sound.” Unleashing their pain in grabbing, complaint and demands, they destroyed my mother and came for me. To survive, I had to break away, cutting off the past to have a future.
So I freaked out when the hungriest ghost in the horde emailed out of nowhere that she was coming to town and perhaps we could meet for lunch or something. Everything in me wanted to delete the message and go on as I have managed surprisingly well to do by shunting this individual to the boondocks of my world. I didn’t want the nasty past dredged up and spilled all over my nice clean life to debilitate me the way it used to. I reckoned she wanted something—something like me to come back and take care of her—and I had finally learned to stop giving to a perennial taker. As a friend likes to say: “Have you learned the word No yet?” But I also didn’t want to say: “No, I don’t want to see you”, and thus supersize her cherished image of me as a cold-hearted bitch who done her wrong. Poor innocent little her who never did anything. Exactly.
I turned off the computer so I wouldn’t have to see the message or deal with it, but of course it was there again in the morning and all day to boot. The invitation caging me in a dilemma seemed an affront and I began to resent its intrusion into my life. I kept saying: “Oh shit” like a mantra. Oh shit, it wasn’t going to go away. Oh shit, I had to deal with it. Oh shit, how could she? Oh shit, I wanted the well capped with cement.
It took a worrisome day or two for Duh to kick in. I was staring at the computer screen trying not to be angry about the email still being there when the voice inside me said: Got Dharma? Duh! I went to my shrine and looked up at the big picture of Karmapa I keep above it. “Karmapa chenno,” I murmured a few times. I looked at the picture of my own teacher and Duh! hit me again. If I was supposed to learn from my teacher by following his example, what I needed to do was imagine myself as him. “What would Rinpoche do?”
The answer was of course a no-brainer. Rinpoche smiles like the sun equally on everything and everyone, without judgment or favor. He nods enthusiastically, he says: “Yes.” He does not turn people away because of what they have done or who they are. He is hopeful, peaceful, forgiving. He is nonstick Teflon personified. “Resistance to what is happening,” his dharma brother Trungpa Rinpoche used to say, “takes far more energy and effort than going with the flow. That should tell you it’s wrong.”
I went back to the computer feeling relieved. I sat up straight and typed back, yes I would meet for lunch, certainly. I added the time and place best for me and hit: Send. Off Rinpoche went into the Dharmakaya. It was easy.
When the chosen midday approached, my stomach started to churn. I wasn’t sure this was going to be easy at all. I had to stop my office work to sit down and have a little heart to heart with myself, reminding me this was no longer about me. “Karmapa chenno.” There was no me. The Dharma keeps trying to get it through my mind there is no one home in this temporary body, no self in its Lego-like compendium of assembled parts. Since there is no me, there is nobody this particularly pernicious relative could hurt. I get the logic and can explain it all perfectly to you, but in turbulent moments I can fail to just plain get it. I had to work really hard to point out to myself that I had a cover. I was going to lunch in disguise, behind a mask. In fact I was not going to lunch at all. “Thrangu Rinpoche is going to lunch,” I told myself. “Thrangu Rinpoche is going to lunch with her, not you.”
And so Rinpoche went to lunch. His welcome was polite and smiley. He showed no negativity, no reaction at all when presented with a surprise third party guest, a new boyfriend in the chain of yet another. He just said: “Hello.” It was very smooth and civil. Rinpoche kept the conversation focused on the two seated across from him, asking how they were and how they met and what they planned to do in town. Learning of an interest in cooking, Rinpoche brightened and listened to a lot of talk about grilling and marinades. In no time at all, the bill was plunked on the table. And a credit card from the far side put on top of it. Thank you’s were exchanged and moments later it ended with: “Have a nice afternoon. The stores are that way.” No angst, no bitter aftertaste, no emotional acid reflux. I couldn’t believe it. I got off that easy.
That’s why I now recommend to all my Dharma friends afflicted by the madness of family matters, impersonate your Rinpoche. "No situation," it's said, "can become favorable until one is able to adapt to it and does not wear herself out with mistaken resistance."
~Sandy Garson"Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
http://www.sandygarson.com
http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.Click here to request Sandy Garson for reprint permission.
posted by Sandy Garson @ 7:12 PM
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