Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [105]
DANCING WITH LIFE
Activities are endless, like ripples on a stream.
They end only when you drop them.
Human moods are like the changing highlights
and shadows
on a sunlit mountain range.
All activities are like the games children play,
like castles being made of sand.
View them with delight and equanimity,
like grandparents overseeing their grandchild
dren
or a shepherd resting on a grassy knoll
watching over his grazing flock.
—NYOSHUL KHENPO RINPOCHE, FROM A SPONTANEOUS VAJRA SONG
Right Action doesn’t have to be a daunting and seemingly unreachable prospect. As we go through life, it’s as if we are playing with sand that sifts through our fingers. When we were children and built our castles in the sand, they were filled with fun. Our adult projects could be almost the same way: full of joy instead of fear, openness instead of defensiveness, equanimity instead of dualism, anxiety, and doubt.
Like me, you are probably trying to fine-tune your actions so they reflect your deepest-held beliefs and values. Fine-tune is the operative term here: how to live and act more and more in a manner congruent with our inner beliefs and words. This is a constant, ongoing, and gradually unfolding process. Remember we are all works in progress, striving to refine our spirits and our lives. It’s unrealistic to expect to instantly transform from seeds into healthy, fully blossomed shade trees. In this spiritual business, we are growing Bodhisattvas, not shade trees; we are growing up in a spiritual sense. We are refining our true nature; refining the ore and extracting the gold. A process-oriented philosophy, Buddhism doesn’t believe in finality. It is about coming home, not about impossible, pie-in-the-sky promises. It can be as simple as we can be. Because we are quite complicated, our paths are complicated.
To take up our spiritual beliefs and concerns and apply them in everyday life, we have to learn to treat life like an intimate dancing partner. Why withdraw and turn into wallflowers—mere spectators? Feel the music of your own life; dance to the drumbeat of living spirit through your own being.
As you walk the path, remember to practice self-forgiveness and self-acceptance. Life is like an experiment, and everything we do is improvisational. Right Action essentially requires of us only that we be perfectly sincere, appreciate things as they are, understand causality and its ethical implications, and try to do our best. For doing our best is the very best any of us can do.
YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU,
BUT …
Everyone says that when you die, you can’t take wealth, family, or possessions with you. But there is something very important that you do take with you, that you can bank on, and that’s your accumulated virtue and wisdom—your karma. The Tibetans say that when we die, so little remains with us from the life we are leaving that each of us is “like a hair pulled out of butter.” Nothing comes with us. All is left behind. The only thing that remains is the karma that we have accumulated through our actions, words, and thoughts. Whether or not you believe in the traditional rebirth doctrine, consider that at that crucial stage of the journey, at death, each of us carries with us nothing more than our accumulated wisdom and virtue. This is an investment plan that can’t go belly-up. You can place your faith in that.
Meditations on Right Action
A Buddhist Meditation known as the Five Remembrances asks us to reflect on the nature of reality and our actions. This can help us to decide what our priorities are and how we should spend our days.
THE FIVE REMEMBRANCES
There is no way to escape aging. I too will grow old.
There is no way to escape physical degeneration. My body too will weaken.
There is no way to escape death. I too will die.
Everything and everyone changes;