The Day I Met Buddha

Annie & I. 

If you met Buddha, would you know it? Or maybe you've already met Buddha, in someone you least expected. The word Buddha, which simply means "the awakened one," doesn't just have to be reserved for the historical figure who lived in India nearly 2,600 years ago. In one sense, the term can be used to represent the inherent goodness and perfection that lies dormant within each and everyone of us, animals included. The problem is that we are ignorant to this inner beauty, and our ignorance leaves this internal gem unpolished. It is only through our own efforts to polish this precious gem that we find this inner beauty shining through.

I met a Buddha, but I didn't even realize it. Her name is Annie, and when I first met her, I didn't like her. There was something about her that rubbed me the wrong way. As she will admit, she's "loud and obnoxious." But what I didn't know, when I first met her, is that there is a reason for her overly positive attitude and joyful spirit. I know what you're thinking, why wouldn't I like someone who is joyful and positive? Well, I guess like some, I might be a bit pessimistic when it comes to someone who seems to be too happy. I guess I just don't trust it in general, and I've often found that it's a cover-up for some deeper issue and is nothing more than a show.

So I had my reservations. The other thing is that when Annie arrived at the yoga/meditation retreat center I was staying at in Cambodia, I was observing silence. To make matters worse, as Annie made her way around meeting everyone, she wasn't aware that I was in silence, so as I attempted to avoid a direct interaction with her, tension between us grew. She could tell I wasn't overly fond of her, and I knew that she could tell. Needless to say, we weren't off to a great start.

"Don't judge a book by its cover."

Okay okay, I know I've heard this a million times, and have had many revelations from this after having wrongly judged someone, yet I still fall victim to the reactive tendency to judge people whom I don't know very well. One thing about observing silence is that it makes it easier to become aware of these judgments that inevitably arise. Without having an outlet for these reactions, they end up bouncing around the head and are pretty hard to miss. Even though I have a practice to help shine a light on the shallowness of the judging mind, which is just to silently note, "judging, judging," there was still a part of myself that believed in the judgments.

Basically, the idea is that the judging mind is just a function of the mind, and its judgments are nothing but reactions based on past conditioning. The judgments themselves can therefore be seen as being temporary, fleeting, and devoid of any intrinsic value. In other words, in no way do our judgments represent who or what we really are, yet we tend to believe them. We can think of the judging mind as a childish prankster who is always fishing for our recognition of what it sends our way. Insecure on its own, it always seeks our approval of whatever judgments it conjures up. When we don't realize what is happening, we unknowingly hand over our approval and even go a step further to write our name on the judgments, thinking they are actually ours to begin with. This is mistake if we are looking to find freedom from automated tendencies of the mind, because by signing off on these judgments, we are effectively stepping down from our platform of control. I don't mean to say that we need to try to control everything, but it's nice when we have a say in the way that we think, act, and respond to life. If we don't, we're nothing more than habituated reactivity in action.

When it came to Annie, I tried not to believe in my judgments of her, but I had no evidence to say otherwise. As the days went on, I started to get more glimpses into who this person was, and she was starting to grow on me. By the time I came out of my 6 days of silence, I had already decided that she was my favorite person at the retreat, but it wasn't until the next day that I really understood why.

On the next day, Annie told her story. When she was 27, she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, and she lost eyesight in both eyes, which lasted for a couple years. She also was slated, according to her doctors, to lose her ability to walk and was facing a life of a being blind and in a wheelchair. Now, she's 32, and as she was telling her story, she was clearly not the person that they said she would be. Her vision is 20/20, and she fits right into the daily yoga classes; you'd never know she had MS.

At some point, during treatment, Annie made a leap of faith. She dropped all of her meds and moved to Colorado to seek out alternative forms of healing. She gives all of the credit of her recovery to amazing healers and doctors of Chinese medicine, and she's telling her story to explain why she has now become an accupuncturist and Chinese herbalist, the very practices that gave her the life she enjoys today. "I'm happy, every single day, because I can see." Hearing her sense of profound gratitude was enough to bring tears to my eyes, especially because my mind was simultaneously being blown in regards to just how wrong I had been about her.

As she reminded us, "You don't know how special something simple like eyesight is until you lose it for two years." Okay, so that's not an exact quote, but you'll have to forgive me, I wasn't expecting anything worth taking notes on. Now, I wish I had been filming her class, which turned out to be a beautiful and moving Dhamma talk, so I could share it with all of you.

Annie's message is loud and clear, don't miss an opportunity to be grateful for all of the things you have. She even offered us the practice of thanking the various parts of our bodies. "When is the last time you thanked your ankle for doing a great job?" she asked. "Most people wait until something goes wrong with their ankle and then they start complaining, but don't they realize that their ankle was kicking-ass everyday of their life until that moment?"

Not only is she inspiring, but she's hilarious. "If you want to know more, just read my book," she joked. I told her later that she really should write a book, and try to teach as much as she can. It's all too often that someone like me, who is fairly serious and devoted to the spiritual path, becomes bogged down with hardship and finds things to be a bit grim at times. "To me, meditation is about connecting with the inner joy that we always have access to," she reminded us. To do this, we can even start by making ourselves smile, which within 20 seconds, she says, will trigger our brains and actually cause us to be happy.
Usually, it's the opposite, but she says it works both ways, and
the brain doesn't know the difference.

Meeting Annie was something that really touched my heart, and was very humbling. It's a great reminder to not trust the judging mind and to not take myself so seriously. The epitome of someone who lives the life they preach, Annie is an inspiration to us all to connect with the magic and the mystery of life in every moment, and to never take things for granted. I can't believe I was so ignorant to have almost failed to realize that I met someone who was truly a spiritual person, someone who knew what it was like to face hardships and come out smiling, a true Buddha. Thank you, Annie, for showing me the way.


*My apologies for any errors I may have made while recounting Annie's story or the details of what she said. Her quotes, as they appear in this article, are simply from my memory, and not intended to be direct quotes.

Shut Your Trap: Silence and Non-Reactivity

It's interesting that we have this little expression, shut your trap, because that's exactly what this mouth of ours is, a trap. It traps us in reactivity which becomes a form of captivity, and restricts us from freedom. Out of all the reactive tendencies we have, the tendency for reactive speech seems to be the strongest. In other words, controlling what we say is perhaps the hardest thing for us to control, because it all happens so fast.

Now in my 5th day of silence, in a community full of people who are talking, this is becoming more and more obvious to me. But don't be mistaken, reactivity doesn't take place at the level of speaking, it happens before that. Just because I'm refraining from speech, doesn't mean I'm not reacting, it just means that I'm given the opportunity to notice my reactivity more as it doesn't have such a clear outlet of expression.

Let's take a moment to look at reactivity. What causes it?

Well, we can react to any form of incoming stimuli. Whether it be a mosquito that lands on us, a sound we hear, something we see, taste, or smell, or an internal stimulus such as a thought or an emotion. Basically, we are talking about the 5 senses and what in Buddhism is the 6th sense, the mind. Incoming stimuli that trigger reactions can come from nowhere outside of these 6 senses.

It's been very interesting to keep silent like this. I've spent many days in silence on various meditation retreats, and while staying at monasteries, but those were in silent environments. Here, in this community, we have a silent day as a group on Saturday, which doesn't even last all day, and then those who are participating in the more rigid "student program" also observe silence on Friday. I've just simply decided to keep it going, and as I said, the results have been very interesting.

With everyone around me talking all the time, I notice my impulse to chime in. I've always been good at chiming in, offering my two cents or whatever. It seems that young generations are now developing this skill more than other skills, they get a quick tongue and don't hold back in the realm of speech. Although it has proven useful at times, it's also gotten me into a lot of trouble. All too often I find that what comes out of my mouth isn't a good representation of who or what I really am. Either way, it's something I'd like to exercise more control over, or at least understand the cause of. By opting for silence, I can see all of these things happening much clearer, because I'm biting my tongue and then I'm just forced have my reactions bounce around my head with no place to escape.

Reactivity is finding an outlet for incoming stimuli. The stimulus comes in, an impulse is sent out and the corresponding reaction takes place. It might be in speech, in thought, in emotion, or in a bodily action, such as pushing someone who insults you or swatting a fly that lands on your arm. The whole process takes place in the blink of an eye, and an unkeen observer might not even realize what has taken place, or that there was an opportunity to do otherwise. And that's exactly what freedom is, in this sense, is an opportunity to do something other than the impulsive reaction.

Since we spend most of our lives reacting to life impulsively, without thinking, we spend most of our lives in captivity to our own mental processes. Observing silence in your life might be the perfect way to get a glimpse at this inner world and learn how to intervene, how to voice your opinion in a way that doesn't require you to actually say anything. If you aren't able to go on a silent retreat, you might just try observing a day of silence at home. You probably think that's impossible, because of your daily responsibilities or your family, but is that just your initial reaction? You might find that you need to speak much less than you'd imagined. I'm still able to be a part of this community, doing my chores, having roommates, etc, all without opening my mouth to speak. I can still answer yes or no questions, by nodding, and even indicate where something is by way of pointing. It's all very interesting.

It makes me want to spend a much longer period of time in silence, because what I'm also experiencing, that I haven't yet mentioned, is that some of these reactive thoughts, after finding no outlet of expression, start to disappear. Space opens up and with that comes clarity, insight, and a much more stable connection to the infinite stillness that is within each and every one of us. I'm finding that I'm much more connected to my own body, my thoughts, and my emotions. Not only that, but as you could imagine, I have lots of extra free time because I'm not spending hours chatting about nothing.

If you can't find an entire day to be silent, you might just try to pick a morning or an evening to spend quietly by yourself. If necessary, just share your intentions with your friends and family, turn your cell phone off, and even give yourself some space, so that you might tune-in to the inner workings of your own mind, in order to find freedom from impulsive reactivity to incoming stimuli. 

Slow Down and Show Up For Your Life

As you may have noticed, if you've been paying attention, it's been some time since my last blog post. You might have thought, "Maybe he's lost his inspiration, or he's stopped practicing."Or, maybe you haven't thought twice about it, but either way, I'm here, writing, again. Despite a few bumps in my practice, it's still going and stronger than ever, but I've been considering dissolving this blog back into the emptiness from which it came. I have many reasons, for and against this idea, with which I won't bother you now. For the time being, the blog lives on, with yet another post.

Slow down. Where are you going so fast? Have you somewhere to be?

We tend to rush through life, always trying to get somewhere, but then when we arrive, we can't wait for the next thing. It's tragic really, because we are missing out on the very stuff of life. Having spent the past 6 months living in Bangkok, I've really become aware of how fast I usually walk. I've never really noticed it before, but I walk pretty fast. This practice that I've come to adopt, one of making an intention to slow down, starts for me by noticing how fast I'm actually going. Once I can acknowledge this and accept it, I'm on my way to learning how to slow down.

As Pema Chodron put it, "Start where you are."We don't get down on ourselves for being broken or needing improvement, we simply become aware of where we are and that's where we start. Maybe you'd like to have more patience, or more presence, or more grace, and that's fine, it's good to have wholesome aspirations for the ways we'd like to improve ourselves.

But then again, maybe you don't, maybe you think you're fine as you are, and that's fine too. I'm not here to try to spoil your picture of reality, just to encourage you to actually know the truth for yourself. If, upon an honest assessment, you find that your picture of reality holds up, then by all means, stick with it. If, like the rest of us, the idea you've been holding onto doesn't quite stand up to the test of observation, then you can consider yourself lucky, because now you have the wonderful opportunity to throw it away and start over again. The more we can start over again, with our ideas and our conceptions, the more able we'll be to stay connected to the magic and the mystery of the ever-passing moment.

One way to find this connection to the present moment is to slow down a bit, to take our time as we move through life. We might have somewhere to be, but that's okay, we can keep things nice and slow simply by leaving a bit early. The secret to patience is to never be in a hurry. We rush to work, and then when we get there, we can't wait to get home again. And then we rush home, and when we get there, we stuff ourselves with food, quite unconsciously and mechanically, and then we turn the TV on, in order to escape the pains of being at home.

Most of the things we do are done in this mechanical and unconscious fashion. It's like we've turned into the machines that we've created. The invitation here is not see every step along the way as a means to an end, but an end in itself. If we give ourselves more time, who knows, we might even enjoy the commute to work, or the long walk through campus to get to class. Maybe we hate work and we hate being at home, for whatever reasons, but we can at least find the spaces in between to be our refuge, our practice.

As I'm writing this, I'm on my third day of silence at a yoga and meditation retreat in Cambodia, and it's this very silence that has really put me in touch with my own tendency to hurry. Just walking around this community, I see the temptation to pick up the pace. But why? Isn't there enough time? Ah, the gentle reminder to slow down, and a sense of gratitude that follows. Without this gentle reminder, that comes from the awareness of what it is I'm actually doing, I wouldn't have ever realized how fast I was going in the first place. So we can start by setting the intention to slow things down, and then pay attention to the reminders as they arise.

My parents always go for a walk around the circular neighborhood they live in, and I remember always being confused by that. "Why go for a walk in a circle, only to come right back to where you started?," I'd think. But now I understand the wisdom in this intentional act. The point was never to go somewhere, but simply to arrive right here and enjoy the moment. Hell, even if you don't enjoy it, at least youre showing up for your life, whatever it may be, and that's more than most people can say.

So as I walk, barefoot, along the dirt paths that wind through this beautiful community here in Cambodia, keeping to myself and trying my best to stay present, I'm reminded of just how real life can feel when we pay attention. I can feel the ground beneath my feet, I can hear the sounds of the birds and the insects, and I can feel this urge to speed things up. They're all there, it's all happening in the now. There's nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be. It's just my life unfolding before my very eyes, and it's beautiful. It's also painful, and lonely, and neurotic, and compulsive, and judgmental, and sometimes it makes me want to scream and break my voluntary silence, but it's beautiful, because it's real.

I invite you to take the time you need for yourself, by slowing down, to be with the passing moments of your short time here on this earth. You'll find that there's never a dull moment, and even though not everything is pleasant, just being here is enough.