The Buddamom

ACCEPTING WHAT IS GIVEN

Every day Buddhist monks go out on their almsrounds. They walk into the nearby town with their bowls and householders fill their bowls with whatever food they have been preparing. The instruction given by the Buddha is to take what is given. If the householder puts meat in their bowl they eat meat. If the householder puts gruel in their bowl they eat gruel.

I woke up this Sunday morning in a quiet cloud of soft white sheets and pillows. The chickens were clucking outside my bedroom window and the air was warm and breezy. Since it was Sunday morning there was a sense of people up and about, going to church or to the lake or out to visit family. There I lay, alone with no plans. Growing up as a Jewess this did not look good. The picture I grew up with was me spending Sunday surrounded by my husband, children, grandchildren going places, having plans, doing things. But somehow over the years I have made friends with my solitude. There is a sweetness to the quiet and spaciousness of this Sunday morning.

A friend of mine is feeling anger about the absence of her father in her life. He left her home when she was three and slowly faded out of her life year by year. She is angry that there is no man in her life to show her how a conscious man treats a woman. She is angry that she has chosen the same sort of unconscious man to be the father of her baby. She is burning with pain over what she doesn’t have.

Life deals us a certain hand of cards. It doesn’t seem fair. We grieve our helplessness and apparent lack of power to have what we long for. Yet I believe, despite all the apparent chaos, there is Divine Order operating in each life. Divine Order is like a tapestry. When you look at the back of a tapestry it is full of knots and loose strings and it makes no sense. When you turn the tapestry over you see a beautiful well thought out picture. I think that our lives are like that. Sometimes I don’t see the meaning of an event in my life until well after the event is over. Then I see, yes, this had to happen in order for a certain good to emerge.

I don’t know why I am alone now. Perhaps it makes me available to be part of your family, part of everyone’s family. Perhaps this solitude frees me to write and to unfold without distraction. I am finally at peace with this hand of cards. I am happy to wake up in a cloud of white, put on my flip flops and walk on the dirt pathways to the café. I am grateful for my $2.99 flip flops for protecting my feet from the stones and stickers on the path. I am grateful to hear the crows as they hold a convention on top of the walnut tree. I chuckle inwardly as I walk past a man who is standing there watching his garden grow (how many times have I done that!!) Different lives afford different pleasures and have different challenges. I am grateful for this life I’ve been given.

Thinking about my friend and of the angry cloud that surrounds her I wish her peace. I don’t know why she was born into a life in which she was abandoned by her father. I don’t know what sort of karma she came in with, what her work here is. But I do know that staying angry is a choice that keeps the painful fire burning. I do know that at every moment there is much to be grateful for and that gratitude is also a choice. The only power we have to affect our future is our thoughts in the present moment.

I think that may be the lesson the Buddha was teaching when he instructed the monks to open their bowls to whatever was given. None of us has control over the karma we came in with. We are born into a given time, to given parents, in a given culture, with a given body and mind. Most of us could spend a great deal of time being unhappy and resentful of the hand of cards we’ve been dealt. We can chose to look behind us and be unhappy with what we see. We can also chose to look where we are right now and find things to be grateful for, the dirt road, the man watching his garden grow, the crow convention, the morning coffee, the call from a friend, the roof over our head, the ability to see, hear, smell, taste, touch. The list is endless. On the most difficult days I do not go to sleep until I’ve written 10 things that I’m grateful for. On the meditation cushion we learn to let go of attachment to both pain and pleasure. As we practice non-resistance to pain and non-attachment to pleasure during our meditation we develop the ability to reframe our experiences. In this relaxed state of mind we can see both wanted and unwanted feelings and circumstances as just the back of our tapestry. The front of our tapestry is as perfect and beautiful and wisely unfolding as the brilliant blue lotus emerging from the muddy swamp.

Jacqueline