MindYourBuddha

I'm taking a moment to write to a classmate who is going through a difficult phase of her life.

A,

I'm writing because I hope it will help you think differently about your circumstances and hopefully improve your outlook on life.  I don't claim to have any answers, I only offer what is working for me.

I believe our attitude is perhaps the only thing we can truly control in life.  I also believe its the most influential tool we have.  In Buddhism class we are being taught a great many things that we know to be true but find difficult to incorporate into the chaos of our daily life.  One fundamental truth is that life plays out through a endless cycle of causes and effects that are unpredictable, impossible to control and creates an inescapable undertow in our lives.  The feeling that your being swept away is universal. 

The process is described in the Buddhist principal of "The Ten Suchnesses", wherein stuff (i.e., people, events, things) continually combines under various conditions producing effects which in-turn create new conditions and stuff to arise and combine ... in perpetual motion.  Its quite natural to feel like we are just food for this machine. 

Just as your new recovery buddy has recently come into your life, so people, events and things continually arise and fade away in your life as they have in all your previous lives.  This process I believe is the handiwork of karma, which I also believe we should think of as a teacher.  I look at karma as a force similar to gravity, in that it can't be seen but its effects are experienced in a real way.  To me, karma has only one purpose, to teach you to become enlightened.  I like to think of it as a manifestation of all the Buddhas - another example of their clever and tactful ways.

Karma works by continually teaching you what you need to know which is determined by tallying up all your deeds over all your lives.  If you do bad things you get more bad things, not because of retaliation or tit-for-tat, but so that you have more situations to investigate, glean insight and learn from.  Once you understand the message karma is giving you, you will be free from those situations or at least their impact on you will be greatly lessened or eliminated.  The key therefore is not to ignore the opportunity karma presents, but investigate it deeply. 

It may helpful to step out of yourself and pretend you are a private investigator.  You have one client - A, and your job is to impassively investigate what makes A tick.  When A has an emotional reaction to a situation, you analyze the conditions, figure out why things developed, from the perspectives of all the parties involved, and make note of A's reaction.  Then assess if the emotional reaction was appropriate given an objective assessment of the situation.  You proceed in this manner and after a while you recognize you keep spiraling down to the same core reasons - perhaps fear of rejection, lack of self-love, need for security, perhaps A has been unfairly wronged in life and has come to believe she deserved it.  The core reasons are the roots for all of A's suffering.

    why --> because
                 but why --> because
                                    but why --> because
                                                       but why --> because
                                                                          ahh!

For many of us the need to be accepted by others (perhaps a mother, father, or mate) far exceeds the need to love ourselves.  We crave acceptance and this causes us to act irrationally - against our nature.  We base our self-esteem on the love or acceptance reflected back to us from others.  The reflection is further distorted by our biases so that what we perceive is likely not even closely in-sync with the opinions of us from the people we interact with.  How often have we found out afterward that our impressions of how people thought about us was completely wrong.

It may help to escape this trap by reminding yourself that everyone has a buddha nature, i.e., a capacity for compassion for others and an innate desire to become spiritually awakened.  For this reason, an attitude of self-hate also condemns the buddha, which for Buddhists is inconceivable. Always remember that the buddha took a vow to lead all sentient beings sinking in a sea of suffering to nirvana.  When we focus on these ideas we find strength and purpose and feel better about ourselves.  We begin to derive our self worth not from external factors but from internal virtues. 

The people that are causing you to suffer are also suffering, and for you to put your suffering aside and do some act of kindness for them in recognition of their buddha nature is the buddha-seeds that alter the outcome of the cycle of cause and effect.  Your experiences will mirror your attitude.  When you feel yourself getting angry, let that sensation be a trigger to remember your buddha nature, your purpose.  Take a long deep breath and be open to the message karma is sending you.