Buddhist Boot Camp (8 page)
Read Buddhist Boot Camp Online
Authors: Timber Hawkeye
Angela always dreamed of seeing the world outside of her hometown. She imagined living in a small apartment somewhere, waking up to the feel of the sun on her face.
Instead of making the decision to move, however, she spent her life riding out every situation, which meant staying with her husband until he decided to leave, working the same job for fifteen years, and only buying a new car when the old one died. She didn’t realize that NOT making any decisions is a pretty big decision in itself.
Her sister Bonnie, on the other hand, pursued a career as far away from home as possible, and her best friend Joy went on a trip across Europe, where she decided to stay.
Something as small as making a decision can be very empowering. We feel in control of our situation (rather than victimized by it), and when things change, we change with them. This flexibility and fluidity doesn’t happen overnight. There is a gap between needing to make a decision and actually making it, and that gap is almost always filled with fear. We fear change and the unknown, so we cling to a past that’s already gone and attempt to avoid a future that is inevitable.
Knowing that this is our problem, however, doesn’t solve it. This is where we can draw inspiration from people everywhere who live by a different set of rules. They don’t live in a different world than the rest of us; they just look at the same world from a different perspective.
Bonnie was filled with confidence and courage, for example, and Joy didn’t pack fear into her suitcase for the trip to Europe (she left it at home). Angela intellectually knew that if her sister and best friend could do it, she too could make some serious changes in her life, and she finally did!
First things first: she turned off everything in her life that filled her with fear, doubt, paranoia, anxiety and anguish (i.e., television). It was a big change for her, since she habitually watched the morning news before going to work and also listened to talk radio in her car.
True to form, the news provided her with more than enough anxiety for the day, every day, without fail (be it an outbreak of a new strain of the flu, a gunman at the mall, food poisoning from spinach, a security alert at the airport, a storm on the horizon, high-fructose corn syrup in her coffee, or a medical report linking hair dye to breast cancer).
If that wasn’t enough, Angela was also used to watching the ten o’clock news before going to bed at night, which, strangely enough, actually made her feel grateful to still be alive, since everyone else seemed to have either been murdered, raped, robbed, or gone missing while she was at work.
After donating her television to a nearby home for the elderly, she canceled her newspaper subscription and began reading books about the art of happiness instead. She called Bonnie and Joy on a regular basis, and they were thrilled to hear about the changes she was making in her life. They encouraged her to continue cultivating whatever filled her with love, light, and positivity, and eliminating everything that filled her with fear (including her friend Gretchen, who was suspicious of everyone trying to either steal her identity, take advantage of her, or tap into her computer).
Angela gathered enough courage to quit her job, move out of New Hampshire, and go back to school. She discovered the mood-elevating benefits of nutrient-rich foods, and now teaches yoga on the beach in Honolulu.
Today she is a daily inspiration for many tourists who take her yoga class at the resort. Angela encourages them to break their routines, make decisions, and change their lives.
Bonnie and Joy recently surprised Angela by showing up on the beach during one of her yoga classes to celebrate her birthday.
Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow. —Aristotle
Practice listening to other people talk about their beliefs without interrupting them. Listen to Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, Mormons, Anarchists, Republicans, KKK members, Heterosexuals, Homosexuals, Meat Eaters, Vegans, Scientists, Scientologists, and so on . . .
Develop the ability to listen to ANYTHING without losing your temper.
The first principle here at
Buddhist Boot Camp
is that the opposite of what you know is also true. Accept that other people’s perspectives on reality are as valid as your own (even if they go against everything you believe in), and honor the fact that someone else’s truth is as real to them as yours is to you.
Then (and this is where it gets even more difficult), bow to them and say, “Namaste,” which means the divinity within you not only acknowledges the divinity within others, but honors it as well.
Compassion is the only thing that can break down political, dogmatic, ideological, and religious boundaries.
May we all harmoniously live in peace.
You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger. —The Buddha
While hanging out by a friend’s swimming pool, my mother passively said to me, “Looks like someone is getting chunky!”
I was sixteen and far from obese by any measure, but I must have already been insecure about the few extra pounds I had gained, because I started seriously obsessing about my weight after that.
Within a month I had her take me to a sporting goods store to buy an Ab Roller (the most popular body-sculpting contraption back in 1993). When she asked me, “Why do you want this?” I said, “Because I want to be a stripper one day!”
She laughed, of course, assuming I was joking, but I felt like the only way I could officially overcome the “chunky issue” was if people paid me to take my clothes off.
It turned out that my insecurity had nothing to do with my outward appearance after all, because even when I started stripping in a couple of years, with a killer six-pack and a fake tan, the pale fat kid still stared back at me when I looked in the mirror.
I’m not blaming my mother for doing anything we don’t all do every single day. She may have said it to me only once, but I continued calling myself fat and unattractive for years thereafter every time I looked in the mirror.
Your words have tremendous power—even the words you say to yourself—so please choose them wisely.
Your past mistakes guide you, not define you. —Anonymous
As her health and memory started to fade, my friend’s grandmother moved out of her home and into her daughter’s house for closer observation.
We all thought it would be a wonderful idea for me to take care of the property (now that nobody was living in it), and perhaps even rent out a room or two, and have the money go toward Grandma’s expensive medicine and care.
The house had fruit trees in the back yard, as did many houses in that neighborhood, and my plan was to collect the excess from the community and feed those in town who couldn’t feed themselves. With the abundance of food that would otherwise go to waste, nobody was to go hungry again.
My friend and his wife had known me for many years and blindly trusted me to always work for the benefit of others. Strangely enough, however, when we approached his parents, aunts, and uncles with the proposal that I accept this unpaid caretaker position in good faith, and that I do everything I could to ease the family’s burden of worrying about the property, help with its upkeep and cleanup, and, of course, make sure everybody had a wonderful home to visit when they were in town, everyone thought it was a great idea except for my friend’s mom, who couldn’t see past her fears and lack of trust in other people (let alone a stranger).
She was worried that I would intentionally burn down the house or something, and sue the family for all they had, or that I’d illegally sublet the rooms and pocket the rent, trash the place, or—and this she said with a great deal of sinister humor in her voice—if I really was as kind and generous as her son made me out to be, I would (God forbid) let homeless people sleep on the floor when it was cold outside.
As it turns out, there was a lot of pain behind her fear. There always is. Any talk of someone living in her mother’s house just made the fact that her mother was dying a reality for her to have to accept, and she clearly wasn’t ready to do that.
I flew back and forth to meet with everyone, and I even had an attorney draft an agreement that gave me no rights to any money or lawsuit under any provision whatsoever, with the intention to best protect the family’s interest and, most importantly, Grandma’s integrity, but her daughter still wouldn’t budge.
This was very frustrating and sad to me at the time, and I did not understand why she wouldn’t accept someone’s generosity without thinking there was a “catch.”
Has the majority of our population gotten this cynical, jaded and pessimistic and I haven’t noticed? Do people no longer believe in random acts of kindness and giving? If that’s the case, then we need to do more of it so that people believe again!
Please don’t be discouraged by this story, but let it ignite the fire in your heart to give, forgive, and believe.
A perfectly wonderful house is now a graveyard for cockroaches and geckos, falling apart because of mildew and neglect, which is what I imagine has happened to my friend’s mom’s heart as well.
The important lesson I learned from this experience is that you can’t want something more for someone than they want for themselves, and that some people simply don’t believe in the light. (How could I have been so naive as to not know this before?) It doesn’t matter if you shine light in their faces, because if they don’t believe in it, they won’t see it.
I realize now that it’s way more important to open our hearts than our eyes. If our hearts are closed, then it doesn’t matter what we’re looking at—we would never see everything as it truly is: Buddhaful.
People don’t need a reason to help people. —Anonymous
The phrase “Take a deep breath” is misleading. The breath isn’t something we can just “take.”
Breathing is a gift, a miracle, offered to us over and over again, yet much like our health, we often take it for granted right up until the moment we no longer have it. Let’s accept this gift with gratitude and appreciation as we would all presents, by saying, “Thank you.”
Sometimes society can seem disgruntled and ungrateful, and the world may appear to no longer be appreciative, but some of its people still are, and therein lies the promise.
So go ahead . . . accept a few deep breaths with your eyes closed and a smile on your face.
What a joy it is to be alive!
Being content makes poor men rich; discontentment makes rich men poor. —Benjamin Franklin
I reached the end of my rope one day and finally said, “Enough is enough! I’ve had it with your lies, violence and manipulation, so get out! This relationship is OVER!”
So even though we had grown up together and shared some good laughs over the years, it felt REALLY good to finally walk away from that abusive relationship. The newfound freedom gave me an opportunity to grow as an individual, do some soul-searching, read books, and spend a lot more time outdoors.
The first few weeks apart were pretty difficult, I have to admit. I really missed the routine of coming home to that familiar embrace (because we humans are comforted by routine, even if it’s dysfunctional). But now that it’s been more than ten years since we last saw one another, I can honestly say that I don’t miss my TV at all.
It’s true that not EVERYTHING on television is negative, bad, violent or filled with mind-numbing commercials, but I personally had to cut it out altogether in order to end the addiction. Did I miss out on some amazing footage, lessons and research shared on the Discovery Channel, for example? Absolutely! But I certainly didn’t miss waking up to bad news or going to bed with even worse news, that’s for sure! I did my own research instead, at my own pace, on my own schedule, with no commercial interruption.
The only change I initially noticed was that I couldn’t join the conversation with co-workers standing around the water cooler at the office anymore, but after a decade without TV I noticed a significantly more remarkable change: all of my thoughts were my own. I wasn’t being told what to think, what to buy, like, eat or watch; I was making my own decisions.
I wonder if not being exposed to media is part of why I’m so happy all the time. I mean, I didn’t just cut out TV; I went all out and eliminated newspapers, radio, and magazines too!
In a book called
Meditation,
Eknath Easwaran explains how we don’t just eat with our mouths; we eat with our eyes and ears too. So if we watch or listen to poisonous negativity, violence, gossip, and pretty much anything that is not conducive to our growth or maturity as adults, then it’s no different than eating only refined sugars, fried foods and saturated fats; we’re bound to get sick. That sickness, however, takes the form of fear, paranoia, anxiety, greed, insecurity, a lack of trust in our fellow brothers and sisters, and discontentment with life altogether. Yuck!
Luckily for us, as is the case with most ailments, prevention is the best cure!
Start paying attention to how much of what you watch is filling you with fear, anger or anxiety, versus how much of what you read or expose yourself to is about unconditional love, gratitude, trust, respect, and the divinity within all beings (including yourself ).
As Carlos Castaneda said, “We can make ourselves miserable, or we can make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”
So go ahead and choose to be happy by taking the first step of avoiding the very things that make you UNhappy. It certainly helped me!
Flowers only bloom when they are ready. People are the same way. You cannot rush or force them open just because you think it’s time. Be patient. —Timber Hawkeye
