Just moving

An old boyfriend of mine is moving. His mother is getting older and her health isn’t great; he’s eager to be near her. As he plots the move from Washington, DC, to Pittsburgh, Pa., he’s been posting updates on Facebook.

“It's official,” he wrote a few days ago. “I am moving to Pittsburgh June first. Start my new job then. Now all I need is a cheap place to live and a way to get around”. Then, this morning: “Off to check out neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. Moving is also Buddhist practice. Namu Amida Butsu.”

I am, at heart, a smart aleck. I couldn’t help but ask him “Is describing moving as Buddhist practice a nicer way of calling it a pain in the ass?”

Well, isn’t it? How often do we find ourselves facing serious obstacles – work, relationships, finances – and then describe them as another form of practice? It’s not without reason, of course. An old friend at the Anchorage Zen Community back in Alaska once told me “the people who annoy us most are our best teachers.” She was right, alas. Approaching difficulties with mindfulness is certainly a far better response than panicking and running in the opposite direction, something I’ve done far too many times.

Zen teaches us to sit “just to sit”. There should be no other motives behind the action. My ex is moving, and while he now has a thousand new responsibilities to deal with as he prepares to uproot his life and move back to his hometown, he has committed to simply moving. There are reasons behind his decision, of course, and deadlines and associated tasks to deal with but, at heart, again, if he approaches it with mindfulness, he is simply moving.

Yesterday, I was listening to a dharma talk online by a teacher whose path I was fortunate enough to cross years ago back in Alaska. Jan Chozen Bays is a Soto Zen priest in Oregon, but she had a huge impact on my practice back when I practiced Zen and she continues to influence me still. She is a great proponent of what she calls mindful eating.

Impatient, she said she often finds herself rushing through meals “to get it over with.” In order to slow herself down, she takes a bite of her food and then sets her cutlery down, waiting until she has chewed and swallowed before she picks it up again. We rush through things to get them over with so that we can continue to the next activity. And then we rush again.

“If you carry that toward its logical conclusion,” she observed, “then what are you rushing toward? Your own death. Is that something you really want to rush toward?”

My ex, and my old teacher, have the right idea. We should approach each action as part of our daily practice. Whether or not I’ll remember that sage advice as I rush through my next task is anyone’s guess, but there it is.

Namu Amida Butsu.

Everything is as it should be

Everything is as it should be. That’s a line that gets tossed around often by Buddhists, particularly when things are going well. It seems harder to apply the same thinking to those moments when all hell has broken loose and we just find ourselves wishing it were all over.

The topic came up during my Monday study class and I used it as my dharma talk this morning at Kokoro, the assisted living home for seniors where I conduct services. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t have given it much thought at all if Jerry, who leads the Monday class, hadn’t put a finer point on the topic.

Everything is as it should be because of karmic causes and conditions. How else would it be? Throw in a small change to those circumstances, be it a matter of timing or weather or someone’s mood, all themselves subject to karmic causes and conditions, and a new result rises from the equation. When A and B happen, C is the result. This is always the case.

In other words, even when shit happens, it’s as it should be.

Part of dealing with that, of course, is accepting that nothing is either good or bad. It’s only how we perceive things that make them so. It’s raining as I write this. I like rain. I enjoy watching it fall and I enjoy the sound of the drops as they patter patter patter against my window. For someone who was caught outside in the rain, or the farmer who is trying to harvest strawberries right about now, it’s a different story. Karmic causes and conditions bring us to our various conclusions about whatever is happening around us.

This isn’t a dark sort of fatalism. It isn’t fatalistic at all. When we understand karma, we are free to make more of a particular event or moment. We can change it by changing the conditions that came together to produce a particular outcome. We may not always get the results we want, and we may be disappointed with the ones we get, but understanding that makes acceptance of what’s difficult easier to bear and opens us to the possibilities of making change where ever we can.

Besides, disappointment in a certain outcome is just another form of attachment, another example of our egos refusing to let go. If things don’t work out the way I want them to, I have cause to look for the underlying reasons and maybe I’ll discover something that will help me do things differently in the future.

Namu Amida Butsu.