Blog.
Life Sucks, Then We Die: Education and Transformation
YEARS AGO, Spirituality & Health queried our readers about what they wanted. Transformation was the common answer. A simple word like transformation attracts a lot of nuanced definitions. When I went deeper into this idea of transformation with my meditation group, the conversations bounced around a number of themes and ideas.
Keep Meditating
“Shut up! Can’t you see, Dad’s meditating,” my 11-year-old son Henry yells at his 8-year-old brothers William and Michael. The noise stops and soon I have two little boys racing to sit in my lap. A lap perfect for an 8-year-old to snuggle into. William pulls my hands off my knees and pulls them around his body. He remembers it is more fun if he has his blanket, so throws my hands off and runs to get the blanket. Michael sees his opportunity and quickly climbs into my lap. I will not be able to focus on breath alone with all the commotion pulling my mind away and I move from watching my breath to a mantra. I say to myself silently chakra sounds “La, ba, ra,” just as I learned in a funeral crypt emptiness meditation in Indonesia. All this is happening on the couch in the “office” I share with my wife, a printer, books, some storage, and a dining room table I use for my desk.
Suffering exists so we have something to do
How we speak and behave affects our relationship with the world. It affects how people see us, judge us, and decide how to interact with us. We know the “Lemon” type; stormy day, can’t go outside and play, “life sucks!” lemonade. “You know what? I’m so glad it is raining. I’ve been wanting to read that book, remake my closet space and write that letter. Maybe I will join an “email hack” group and tell Russians what is really going on.”
The Untouchables
A family friend just hung himself. This friend was in his 60’s, recently retired. He seemed good. However, suicide is the second leading cause of death for people ages 10 to 34 and fourth for those ages 35 to 44. I hate statistics because they take us from the individual to the masses where things seem to get lost to a mind-numbing bureaucratic insensitivity that leads to indifference and non-action. But 800,000 suicides a year touches a lot of people. A lot of sad parents, siblings, spouses, children and friends left behind.
I feel healthy! I feel happy! I feel terrific!
WE STOOD ON TABLES or chairs, threw our hands in the air, and as animated and loud as our tired, sleep-deprived bodies would allow, yelled through hoarse throats, “I feel healthy! I feel happy! I feel terrific!”
From Separation to Connection
We want people around us who accept us as we are. We choose to not spend time with people who point out our frailties, inconsistencies, sins, bigotry, unfairness, insensitivities, and prejudice, or who push our buttons in real time. So we unfriend and avoid those who do not feed our worldview, beliefs, biases, and bigotry. We end up creating a wall of friends to reinforce and support our prejudice.
Mindfulness Can Get You There
We humans love our ignorance. Our ignorance allows us to have lazy brains that relish the patterns we learned in childhood. We are adults now, responsible for our lives, our actions, our movements, our beliefs, and our ability to love. We have the power to change our path. All the power to change our path is in our actions.
Man’s [Woman’s] Response to Energy
My mom was a Depression-era survivor. She grew up in eastern Ohio, a coal mining area on the border of West Virginia. When I would go there as a kid, I remember every morning being able to write my name on the hood of my grandpa’s car in that night’s deposit of coal dust. It was not a rich area. The story my mom told me goes like this.
We Are People
It’s hot here in Nicaragua. We were living in Granada— very hot, very humid, and not the easiest place to self-isolate with six kids. So we thought maybe we could find an isolated beach to escape the heat and play in the waves. We climbed into our rented, manual transmission, diesel, 16-passenger HiAce van to go explore. Driving in Nicaragua is not like driving in the U.S. On the two-and-a-half hour drive to the beach, we dodged cows, dogs, horses, ox carts, horse carts, people riding horses, and people who walk in the road like it is a sidewalk. This is in addition to more standard traffic like cars, trucks, motorcycles, public buses, and bikes.
Simply Love
I saw no weakness, infirmity, or surrender in old people when I was young. And I don’t see weakness, infirmity, or surrender as an age thing today. Lots of young and old people have surrendered to drugs, alcohol, video games, work, overeating, bigotry, hate, biblical laziness, and sloth, or the five principal Kleshas of Buddhism, namely: attachment, aversion, ignorance, pride, and jealousy. Age was not the cause of choosing a path of unfulfilled surrender.