WHAT MATTERS?

I have always been interested in world religions, what they teach and what I may find to be essential, common tenets across the spectrum. Of course, everyone must find his/her own way in faith and matters of spirituality (or not). I am not a Buddhist, or a scholar in world religions and am not evangelizing for Buddhism here. However, I wanted to share what I have found of value in its Noble Eightfold Path, which can foster a more conscious way of living, and may even support other religious faiths, if one so chooses.

    The Eightfold Path was thought to be revealed in the first sermon of the founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama (563 to 483 B.C), known as the Buddha, who achieved “enlightenment” after meditating for 49 days under a Bodhi tree. Buddha did not claim to be a god, and is not considered a god to his followers. He was a teacher who shared his experience and insights and a way to achieve enlightenment.

    For me, the eight tenets of this path embody ideals to aspire to in order to be more mindful of how we live and how we relate to other human beings. The following is a paraphrased/simplified description of each. *

1. Right Understanding: The realization of the true nature of reality, embodied in the Four Noble Truths: The truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering.
2. Right Resolve: Cultivates wholesome and ethical intentions, including renouncing harmful or violent actions, developing goodwill and compassion toward all beings, and non-attachment.
3. Right Speech: Being aware of what, how and why you are apeaking, and to whom. Abstaining from lying, divisive speech, abusive speech, and idle chatter, causing discord or harm through your speech.
4. Right Action (Conduct): Causing no injury, bodily or otherwise harm to others, not taking what is not given, no excessive material desires. It aims to promote peaceful, honorable, and moral conduct.
5. Right Livelihood: Earning a living that is ethical and doesn't harm others or oneself, engaging in compassionate activities to make a living in a way that creates happiness, wisdom, and well-being, while relieving suffering.
6. Right Effort: Guarding the “sense-doors,” restraint of the sense faculties to rid oneself of unwholesome thoughts, words and actions, and, ultimately, to perfect a good and wholesome state of being.
7. Right Mindfulness: Guarding/watching over the mind for thoughts that take over or dominate. The weaker they become, the stronger wholesome states of mind become. Avoid distractions or being absent minded, rather being conscious of what one is thinking, saying and doing.
8. Right Concentration: The centering of consciousness, evenly and rightly on a single object (meditative state).
         * (https://en.winkipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path#)

    These are questions I had when I first looked into the Eightfold Path:
1. What would it mean to be aware of and follow each one of these tenets, for me and for others? 2. What would it mean for me and for others if we do not follow them? These, and other questions may be pondered from time to time to “check in” if one is being true to these ideals. So that all this isn’t too abstract, I share an example of checking in for Right Speech, which to me implies written communication as well.

• What is the purpose of my speaking?
• Is it necessary or helpful that I say/write it?
• Will its purpose be understood?
• Am I too impulsive in what, how and why I am communicating?
• How can I speak in the most essential, concise and clear way and not just for small talk, gossip, digressing, or rambling?
• Do I need to say everything I am thinking? (usually not)
• Is there an element in my communication of “one-upmanship,”or a subtle unhelpful, sarcastic tone?
• Am I speaking just to prove I am right about something, rather than speaking objectively with facts and logic, and/or noting that it is subjective (my experience and opinion only).

        These questions may seem excessive or obsessive; however, for one following Buddhism, they are no different from other ways people attempt to adhere to their faiths. I have been drawn to the Eightfold Path, see its value, but, no doubt, fall short and “forget to remember” to regularly check in, but there is always “try and try again!”

        Buddhists may have much to say about my calling the Eightfold Path “ideals” or cherry-picking this aspect of Buddhism, as there is a much greater understanding to be grasped and followed if one were to consider oneself a Buddhist, though the Eightfold Path is central to any of its branches, and is common sense for every day life, or a lifetime, no matter if one has a spiritual path or not. 

To me, it is what matters.

Handpainted Tongka by Tibetan refugee

SWING OF THE SEA: a work in progress

                                            I

                                SWING OF THE SEA

I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore,/Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more;/Soon far from the rose and the lily, and fret of the flames would we be,/Were we only white birds, my   beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea! (W.B. Yeats)

A heart broken may open with empathy for others and for oneself. Or, under the weight of pain, a heart may close until it does not feel pain—or pleasure. Hope recedes in the humbled heart, abiding—in the dark, eclipsing the heart’s deepest longing. And yet, a gift of grace (who knows how or from where?) in quiet advent comes to illuminate what is, rather than what is wished for.

                                             ****

       Celia lies restless in the dead of night, her husband warm next to her, but she is cold to the bone, and the house quiet as a grave. She tells herself, “Count your blessings. Things could be worse, so count them and be grateful. Oh, if only they could. She cannot remember how it feels to feel good with a hopeful heart. In her despair, she wishes to disappear, or alternatively to flee to a place where “few lilies blow…out of the swing of the sea.” She once thought a place like that existed—somewhere. Celia conjures up, as she has countless times—that lucid dream on a rainy day long ago in Boston. 

        

        She ducks into a cafe and takes a window table with a single white lily in a red glass vase. In a moment, she feels an intense warmth overtaking her senses, like a rising tide. She inhales the flower’s perfume, the aroma of espresso, delights in the fanciful arrangement of delicate fruit and cream pastries, hears the sound of falling rain. Across the way she notices a brownstone—a lamp lit at the window. In the rapture of it all, she imagines she will leave the cafe, cross the street to her true home and while away the afternoon gazing through her very own window on the world, raindrops gathering on the glass pane—alone and at peace.

        Just then, a petite woman who looks both young and old is before her blocking the view. “Bon jour, Madam,” Celia hears as a song and marks her enigmatic smile as she places a cafe au lait Celia had intended to order on the table. “Anything else you desire, Madam?”

“No...no, nothing, nothing at all," as the mood evaporates like a fading dream. She picks up the pink paper bill left on the table and thinks, a small amount come due for a castle in the air. So strange is the experience that, after reluctantly leaving the cafe, she wondered if the light across the way went out, and the once-warm cafe is now only a cold, empty store front. 

Remembering the experience brings back the feeling of concentric circles of longing emerging from her center, drawing her toward the peace felt on a drizzly day of daydreams—a misty memory to lie awake with—again on this night.

Is it truly my heart’s desire to dwell in a timeless room, in a Brighton brownstone, in the city of Boston, in the state of Massachusetts, on the North American continent, on planet Earth, in the Milky Way—one of billions of galaxies in an infinite universe?  Have I lost all hope or just struggling with letting go of a false hope? They say, "The truth will set you free.”

        She turns over, fluffs her pillow and pulls the covers up to her chin, as she drifts off into the few hours left before dawn, imagining angels circling above. She doesn’t believe in angles. She doesn't believe she is one of the lucky ones who can.

                                          ****

How does one let go of a dream, an illusion, the pain of loss or betrayal, at last to grasp that nothing is ours to let go of? A letting go would seem to bring release, but bittersweet though—the “comfort” of truth gradually awakening consciousness, its waves crashing over the heart. 

    Consciousness is thus: We do not know what we do not know—until we do. Then, the truth may set us free to see the reality--but also to endure it.