Defined by What You Don't Like?

I am beginning to notice whenever I am uncomfortable in body or mind, I lean towards defining myself by what I don’t like. This can be news that is unpleasant, or that I feel really offends my being. I know I am not allowing peace to come into my life when I find myself doing this….that is, when I wake up to the reality. I think it came from being told how to act and be in the hetero-sexual world by my peers, family, society leading up to our favorite news and advertising. To act natural in hostile world is something everybody has to works towards. When you are young, you are assumed to be immature and full of it. One learns to scream louder at that point. Midway through life, wisdom hits and you calculate your odds in every situation, and learn to take on those that you feel you can “win.” Maybe you are smart enough to stay silent, or get creative with your approach when things don’t seem to lean in your direction. Does peace come in at either point? Or only when you get your way? You tell me. There are many areas in which peace is kept at bay when things are not quite comfortable. By now we should know that being misunderstood, challenged and uncomfortable in body and mind plays a very big part of our life. So, why in my case do I continue to look for things I don’t like? For the drama and the excitement of finding the utmost, stupidest thing in the world? To get a false sense of security by knowing I am better than this? That is such a "Humpty-dumpty" view of life. I can’t keep holding myself as a fragile egg, where the slightest crack disrupts my peace. I am actually running towards suffering. Maybe I’ll put a rubber band on my wrist, and every time I catch myself doing this I’ll snap it to remind myself. Peace is always available even in the most chaotic situations...and really never takes a holiday.

Essentially No Fun?

When I went to the monastery to meditate all night, one of the most interesting parts of the dhamma talk I heard that night was an explanation of the value of the precepts. What you do when you take a day off to meditate with the monks, you are really taking the precepts for one day. To live like the arahants do. This voluntary practice allows you to tap into your heart. It is with the recognition that Buddha dhamma has provided some help with your life.


The first five are fairly easy and make sense. Take Number 7 for instance, which is (Nacca-gita-vadita-visukkadassana mala-gandha-vilepana-dharana-mandana-vibhusanathana veramani sikkhapadam samadiyami) I undertake the precept to refrain from dancing, singing, music, going to see entertainments, wearing garlands, using perfumes, and beautifying the body with cosmetics. If you think about it, it means no Ipod, movies, clubs, bling bling, or moisturizer and essentially no fun. This is done to get your mind back under your control, void of external conditions and things(often called distractions), and ease your access to your own peace. If I am looking for a nice tune, great food, a large rock or a splash of wine to be happy, then I am seesawing between happiness, neutral feelings, and unhappiness. Tipping either way depending on whether I like or dislike a particular thing. The thing we love is really not the music, taste, rings, or the views but the place where it takes us in our mind. If I want wisdom, I have jump off this ride to access it. Back to more meditation and the thoughts of where I want to be mentally, using loving compassion with myself. This is not a punishment denying me what I “truly deserve,” from being a medical guinea pig that resulted in my brain injury, but really a natural offshoot of the fact that I survived it. And now, how best can I make the remaining time I have left? In the pursuit of more wisdom seems to be the final frontier for me.

I have to say Many Thanks to the two strangers from Macau that stopped me to ask for a smile when I was wrapped up trying to find a gift for a friend. Not unhappy, but I have to focus on task at hand with this silly brain injury. It is funny, because I bought lip protectant to help to smile more, and chocolate bars to give away on my walk downtown. I was in heaven with the funny conductor on the trolley, smiling a lot, just a few minutes before I ran into these two. Over glasses of wine we covered many topics, but how we as people have so much more in common than not. The others we are so afraid of want the same thing out of life as we do…to be happy.

Without Blinders

We are still traveling down the road assessing likes, dislikes and neutral objects when we encounter a boulder that appears in the road. It was fine until the bugs, the heat, the other idiots on the road, and now a boulder. It slowly becomes obvious that you are a reactive state to things that appear to be coming at you. So if you dislike that boulder in front of your new sports car on your first day off in a month, you may get agitated or even angry. And with this you may start to add other things you don’t like about the day, the car or your life. I have often said you are really asking for more misery to help( right! help?) you to understand why this boulder is really NOT making your day. You’re so focused on this boulder, all else falls by the wayside. It does not make any sense if you break it down, but we do it (or at least I do) more often than we care to say. Now, put this boulder aside, you are barreling towards with blinders on and you have not at all noticed the beauty that is on the periphery of your journey. You may have earlier when the going was smooth, easy only because for one hot minute you forgot your dislikes. Likes: the wind blowing through trees, the sunlight reflecting on leaves, the wisp of fog burning off. Or one of my favorites – the smell of impending rain(yes, I smell it). Oh, and that person saying hello to you for no other reason but to share in the beauty of the day. And snapping back to your current upset state about that boulder and you are hard pressed to grunt “hello” back. The world is much more than little old me, and will show its beauty to someone a bit more awake than I, if I don’t change. And now for some reason, I am much aware of how little time is left in my human body. I want to view this world like I did at 12: big, amazing, beautiful, fantastic and ever changing. I like it.

Our World View

I am using the current downturn now financial crisis in the market to watch how my mind works. We know that we divide how we see the world up into threes: Likes, dislikes, and neutral (or no feelings). With our pick we quickly view the world and everything we encounter with our five senses. And a few rare times with our sixth sense — intuition, which I have spoken about in previous posts. You’ll find that you want to gravitate to things you like, but in the process you unfortunately find a lot more that you don’t like. For instance, in this economic climate one would be hard pressed to find something good here, and quickly worry or dislike. And perhaps panic. Just listen to the news, and watch them trying to make sense out of all this…they can’t, so how could you?

So, I have been trying to monitor how I perceive this current crisis and life in general. If I look back at my life and my family’s lives, I have watched my grandfather die trying desperately to hold to money and life. He did not like dying, and he wasn't prepared. We lose it all, and we die just as helpless as we came into the world at birth. All we can do is make wiser decisions on our path, and try not to focus on dislikes. We really cannot change to the world to be our way, and have everyone view it through our eyes. Nor can we shut down and go into a corner because we don’t like the way things are right now. What we can do is change how we see the world, and with our wisdom view it with a lighter mind. This is not to be confused with a positive outlook but seeing things as they really are, always changing. Try not to hold on to the disappointments of dislikes, there are way too many. They have the ability to change when we think we have it all arranged the way we like it. Look at the financial mess, we have enough history I hope, so that we remember when it was all good. Now a disaster…temporarily. It seems like we find ourselves constantly disliking something or someone, even to the point of looking for more things to dislike. Now think about it… we are causing our own misery one dislike at a time. For instance, even a neutral view of someone alone can prevent us from meeting the right person. We might walk by and not say hello to someone who can change our life immensely, holding to our narrow view.