I wouldn't call myself a Buddhist. I'm not an Anything-ist really, least of all that. I wouldn't be comfortable calling myself a Buddhist unless I'd spent a lot more time learning about it and walking the path. But of all the spiritual practises I've encountered, Buddhism is the one that I find most helpful in difficult times.
I've read a little bit, I know a few of the famous Buddhists by name, and unlike Presbyterianism, in which I was immersed for many years, several Buddhist teachings have had immediate concrete value in my life. As more than a few scholars have pointed out, many of the world's major religions have overlapping values. Indeed, I think many of the principles I've found helpful in Buddhism have equivalents in Christianity. But I never really connected with them until I heard them expressed from a Buddhist perspective.
In my admittedly very limited experience, Buddhism is more accessible and grounded in everyday experience than other paths. I also think it has aged well, maybe because there is less rigid dogma to try to lug into each new century. It's quite possible that with further exposure and study I could find the orthodox Buddhists who take ancient texts literally in contexts that no longer make sense or the practitioners who abuse their families or wage war in the name of a spiritual idea. I just haven't observed that yet.
This doesn't have all that much to do with dreaming, but in my defense I have been doing my level best to achieve REM for some hours now. I've been tossing and turning since 3am and as it is now 530, I thought I might stop struggling and embrace my current reality. This seems like a great time to share a Buddhist idea that has, quite literally, gotten me through the night.
One of the most helpful things I've learned from Buddhism is how to be grateful. Many religions have this as a core tenet in some form so I don't have a snappy explanation for why I like the Buddhist version better. I tried for many years to practise Christian gratitude - I prayed and said Grace and counted my blessings, and I intellectually understood the value in these rituals. But at least for me, the whole endeavor was pretty loaded with "should"s that generated a distracting and oppressive sense of duty, and since my efforts did not achieve any significant sense of peace I was also saddled with a constant sense of guilt that I must not be doing it sincerely enough.
Buddhism does not ask you to combat bitterness, despair or anger with gratitude because you "should", because religious leader so-and-so said to, or because you are going to Hell and the Grand Being will turn His back on you forever if you don't. The message from Buddhism about gratitude is that it WORKS. It says here is a tool, accessible to anyone who wants suffering in their personal life and the world around them to be less.
I do want to proffer the semantic caveat that this idea is not generally labeled "gratitude" in Buddhist parlance. The Buddhist idea I'm referring to has many names and teachers but since these teachings translated as Gratitude to me for reasons I will explain later on, I call it Buddhist gratitude.
Buddhist gratitude is about accepting the current situation without making excuses for it. It's about welcoming all of the potential good in any moment, however uncomfortable. It does not require you to make any promises, barter your future good behaviour for some immediate peace, turn a blind eye to injustice or ignore pain.
If I am in distress, this kind of gratitude calms my craving mind that is wishing things were different than they are and is feeling simultaneously entitled and unworthy. It allows me to recognize the things in my life that are already sustaining and could be helpful in the current situation. It also helps me to acknowledge and troubleshoot the things that are not working well, without getting all bent out of shape that these challenges exist in the first place.
Buddhist gratitude allows me to welcome the present moment and encourages me to view the situation with ruthless honesty, knowing that by doing so I am most likely inviting yet more challenges into my life. It is not a Pollyanna form of denial, nor is it an attempt to guilt myself into happiness by comparing my circumstances to the less fortunate. The intention is not to cover up or outweigh the bad things in life by focusing on the good. It is about removing the labels "good" and "bad" from experience altogether, and just calling it "now".
Some might call this acceptance but I don't - because it does not bring me to a place of either apathy or peace. It is a more active thing, though more natural and gentler than any of the efforts I made to Thank God as a Christian, which I found contrived and forced. The other reason I don't call it acceptance is that I don't associate it with maintaining the status quo. Sometimes gratitude has allowed me to react to discomfort or pain by deliberately going into an experience that I know will be even "worse" - only to discover that it is a place I always wanted to be. The magic of Buddhist gratitude in my life is that it alchemically transforms the scariest, hardest, most challenging parts of lived experience into joy.
My second caveat in this post is a spiritual one. Once the Buddhist gratitude idea sank in and I began to use it, I recognized it - I think it's embedded in many religious traditions and I have close friends who talk about their relationship to God (or Jesus Christ if they are born again) ((or Higher Power if they are in AA)) as the doorway through which they can access this tool, whatever you want to call it. I have heard it described as a sense of being deeply cared about by a powerful being, who will accept them unconditionally and has set them on a special and important road, upon which they have constant access to a loving travel companion.
Armed with this knowledge, regardless of the specific origin of their faith, I have seen these people face hardships with grace, courage and strength, offering help and comfort to other people along the way. I think that's wonderful, I really do, with no satire or sarcasm in sight. It makes me glad. It just does not work for me. I don't consider this a failing of mine or of the Christian religion in which I was raised. And I also don't lose any sleep trying to understand why that's so. I find it entirely unsurprising and also immensely comforting that me and someone else can reach what appears to be the exact same place through two different routes.
It would make dogmatics of every major world religion roll over in their respective unmade graves but I think this empirically supports something I've long thought, which is that the world is better off if there are lots of religions in it - the more the merrier, a kind of spiritual diversity at least as important to human health as ecological diversity. I think we should all have access to unlimited spiritual education. Find the path that resonates and follow it. It's tough to embrace this if you think there really is only one true path and I'm sorry - that is where fundamentalists and I will forever disagree - if they don't kill me first for being a heretic.
Now THAT was a little joke; if there's one thing I can't stand it's a spiritual practise with no sense of humor... No, I don't feel threatened for realsies; I consider myself lucky to live in a place where it is not an obstacle to life or liberty if you don't subscribe to the geographically dominant religion. I deliberately left out happiness as I have observed many people shunned by their fundamentalist relatives for various reasons that make no sense to me and which leave deep grooves of grief on both sides of that fence. To me this seems unnecessary and frankly tragic.
I have also been at ground zero where the impact of some gianormous Christian fundamentalist organization on things that are very important to me was being felt in a deeply personal way. So yes, there are aspects of the big, organized religions I have been exposed to that are a personal turnoff, I do have opinions about what aspects of those traditions might be obstacles to human happiness in general, and I have grave concerns about fundamentalists of any stripe. I don't know enough about Buddhism to determine whether that kind of judgement is frowned upon but my guess would be there is some very practical reason that being more compassionate and less offended by what I perceive to be other people's crazy, even abusive, antics is just good sense, and would make me more effective at reducing my own suffering and the suffering of other beings.
So I'm not a Buddhist, at least not yet. But I am very grateful that it's out there, in the world, and we're getting to know each other.
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