It's been a while since I've been online. Work travels, internet problems, and plain old business have served to keep me away. Yet, I've been thinking a lot...mostly about defending one's philosophical position, selflessness, and the notion of a tender heart. This is not an easy path we have chosen.
As a (relatively) normal middle-aged woman in the USA, my cultural expectations are that if I am seeking peace through learning to understand my mind and adopt a philosophical approach that includes being spiritually generous to others through compassion, serving them, recognizing everything is impermanent and trying not to be attached to my "things" and "positions", then I SHOULD FEEL peaceful and "happy". Shouldn't I? But instead, I find my old intolerances alive and well, just expressing themselves differently. Now the internal banter is, "Why don't these people SEE how their positions are counter to what is REAL!" Hello. Real to me. Real to me NOW (not earlier in life). And certainly NOT real to them. What is real, anyway? If I start to cram my beliefs down their throats as they would like to do to me with theirs, I'm no different. But, we are learning that there is no ME to BE Different!!! SO, truly, I am not different. I just have a different perspective. My task is to find the skillful means to be loving, compassionate, and unattached while being what i believe. Wouldn't it be easier to cram my ideas down their throats????? This is clearly a journey with no ending and no winning...just continuing and being. Well, they say there is "enlightenment", but if there is no "me" and nothing is permanent, anyway, then what is enlightenment?
To make matters worse, when I think of selflessness, I realize I have to be open to the pain of others all the time. Now what is THAT about? I thought this path was about happiness? How can you be happy and in pain?
On the gomden it begins to feel like the problem isn't with the path, but with our notions of what happens on the path.
Lately I've been contemplating the meaning of "happiness" and "elightenment". I've rather given up trying to understand enlightenment. At this point it is so far out of sight, it isn't time to think about it. Happiness, however, is important.
I'm on this path to find happiness for myself and hopefully for others. Maybe happiness isn't the problem; maybe the hedonistic self-satisfying way we define it leads to confusion. If happiness isn't me feeling "easy", "in no pain", and "totally at peace", then maybe it is something else. Could it be another state of mind in which I can feel the pain of others - feel my own pain - and even recognize that underneath it all I'm still going to have to face my intolerances and monkey mind every day in a skillful way?
It could be. Fill in the blanks...Happiness is not an emotion, it is _____________. what? When I get THAT, I think I'll stop being scared of the path.