This may be a question you’ve never asked yourself before, but take a moment to think about it. To be clear, I’m not talking about someone who has lost their sight at some given point in life. I’m referring to someone who was born blind and has never actually set eyes on another human being. How does this person know how to smile? And how do they know and acknowledge that this is a sign of happiness and/or contentment?
There’s a lot to be said for human instinct and we often take it for granted. Smiling is just one of those instinctive forms of expression that humans know, and it’s universally recognized around the world as a sign of positive emotion, even if it’s not necessarily taught. This like explains why my 1-year old son smiles his biggest smile, right around the time he’s filled his diaper for me. Kids.
What this teaches us is that humans have the ability to use aspects of themselves that are instinctive. Or in simpler terms, sometimes you gotta go with your gut. It takes a lot of effort to trust yourself enough to make tough decisions and hope for a positive outcome. And the truth is that your outcome may not always be positive. Sometimes, you may fail more often than you succeed. But you need to trust yourself and be comfortable n your choices. This is truly the only way you WILL succeed.
We all doubt ourselves, sometimes. But self-doubt is what usually leads to failure. Trust your instincts. They’ll bring you farther than you may think. And even if they sometimes lead you astray, always remember that failure also helps you to learn and grow. ☯
Life certainly throws out a more-than-fair amount of challenges into one’s daily life. Even when you think you can fight your way through one obstacle, another one pops up to either take the first one’s place or make matters even worse. It certainly seems that way, over the past two years.
If anyone is keeping score, issues in my professional life have caused me difficulties and sent me home long before COVID-19 took hold. Despite this radical change of life and the reckless endangerment of my dream job by others, I kept on pushing and fighting. Then, job interview after job interview came and went. Most left me feeling pretty good and certain that I wold turn a corner. But I’ve been consistently passed up over and over.
Then at the beginning of the year, the world fell into chaos (more so than it usually is) and the pandemic struck. I’m sure that at this point, I don’t need to explain the problems and issues that having the world self-isolate and essentially lock itself down has caused. Even six months later, the world is still licking its wounds and trying to recover.
Then, we attempted to sell our home. We came to this decision as a result of my current job situation and the fact that we’re trying to eliminate debt. Despite many people who came to view our home, structural issues with our foundation caused most people to pass. We have come to the decision that we need to repair our foundation, which requires the demolishing of our finished basement. This sucks, because it also meant we had to take our house off the market as we can’t really show the house while we’re in mid-construction/renovating.
It almost feels as though everything is coming up bullshit and sometimes it certainly feels as though it would be easier to simply give up and let go. And no, I’m not being fatalistic or trying to send out red flags; I simply mean that the Buddhist side of me feels that life shouldn’t be such a struggle, that I shouldn’t have to force so hard in order for life to be good. The martial artist in me believes that I need to keep fighting and win, no matter what the struggle. If it comes down to me or them, it won’t be me! More often than not, the martial artist wins over the Buddhist. Such is life.
“Success Is Stumbling From Failure To Failure With No Loss Of Enthusiasm.”
– Winston S. Churchill
As a general rule, most people are afraid of failure. They see it as a weakness and they believe that it’s an embarrassment or shameful to fail at something. But the irony is that I can promise beyond any reasonable doubt that every living person has failed at something. It’s inevitable. You show me someone who claims they’ve never failed at something in life, I’ll show you a liar.
But failure is an important part of life. You see, life believes in showing you what you’re doing wrong. It sucks, can be painful and can even be disruptive to one’s life. But it sure shows you what path you should be taking. Failure isn’t a failure, it’s a learning tool. It helps you to grow and become the person you’re meant to be. I’ve been defeated and failed at a number of things in my life. But I keep on fighting. Because what’s the point of the lesson if you do nothing with it?
Don’t be afraid of failing at something. As long as you keep pushing, fighting and moving forward, you’ll eventually clear the storm and come out on top. And should you happen to fall and fail, the important part is to rise, dust yourself off and find a new and different path to pursue. ☯
Since a lot of people are stuck at home until the world returns to normal, many have chosen to undertake some DIY projects within the home. I, myself, have decided that the patch of bare dirt in our backyard deserved to get some love and I started working the soil. Much to my surprise, the past few summers of weeding and spraying made the soil pretty easy to till and plant some grass seed.
I managed to make myself proud as a full half of our backyard now contains a full, lush green lawn that requires mowing twice as often as the front yard. The other half contains a quarter space where we plan on planting our own vegetables and a quarter space that I had left for Nathan to dig with. I have since seeded the digging quarter as Nathan has given up his mining ambitions in favour of his razor scooter. but I digress…
Our back yard has a circle of grey bricks that had apparently been arranged to ring a tree that had been in the backyard. When we moved in, the tree was cut down at its base and nothing remained but a slim stump. So I decided to till the soil within the ring and plant some flower seeds. I felt that the back yard could use a little color. Within a few weeks, the entire ring grew some greenage that was over half my height! I was tickled pink (not literally) and like an unaware idiot, kept watering daily and trying to get everything to grow as much as possible.
The decimated centre area, once my wife and I removed all the weeds
Turns out that the tall, green stalks I was watering and so proud of, were invasive weeds that were preventing the actual flowers from fully blooming. I have to admit that I had no clue and I thought the thick stalks were a species of flower that would bloom fully. Once we found out, my wife and I took an afternoon to remove as much of the weed as we could in an effort to let the flowers take hold.
The flowers that come in when they’re permitted to bloom
Flowers are starting to take over and some are already in full bloom. But as usual, it got me to thinking about perspective. Until I was told the tall stalks were weeds, I was happily and cluelessly watering the weeds like they were worth their weight in gold. Once I knew they were weeds, I got angry and became hell-bent on removing them from my garden. But I would have been oblivious, otherwise.
And this is something that applies to life, as a general rule. Something that may be unpleasant to one person could easily be a benefit to another. Sometimes, things may seem like they don’t belong but even things that are not preferred can be important to someone else. Dandelions are considered weeds, but it sure doesn’t stop my son from loving the yellow ones and blowing the fluff off the white ones. It’s all about one’s perspective. ☯
I first heard the quote in today’s title all the way back in the early 1990’s when I started reading Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series for the first time. At the time, I thought it was just a cool quote, “Duty is heavier than a mountain, death is light as a feather.” It’s a quote that the main protagonist ends up carrying with him throughout the entire series. Since the release of the books, many people have been quick to point out that the quote actually comes from an old Japanese military text (myself included, since I wrote about it last year).
But by the time I had reached the end of the series, the expression had come to mean a great deal more to me than simply a line in a book. And in truth, there are a lot of values that are important to me; loyalty, honor, duty and obligation. These are things that are surprisingly not thought about in any great depth by most people. But the martial arts (at least traditional schools) are steeped in these values. And I’ve grown with these values ingrained as part of who I am.
“Loyalty Above All Else, Except Honor…”
– Lt. Vincent Hardy, Striking Distance
Doing the right thing should be easy. People think it’s hard to do the right thing, but it really isn’t. Unless you’re values are a bit shady, doing the right thing should come smoothly and easily and should be done without thinking. It shouldn’t be a chore, it should feel like what you’re SUPPOSED to do; because it is. It should be. Key word: should. Sometimes, it can be harmful to yourself to do the right thing because it can cost you.
Doing the right thing can sometimes take something from you that you endeavoured to obtain for yourself. So the important question becomes, if you know that being loyal and doing the right thing will take something important away from you, do you still do it? Yes. The answer you’re looking for is yes…
Duty is ever-present. There will always be things in your life that you have a bound duty to, so you should roll with that. Honor is always important. It helps you to do what’s right, even when it seems hard. Loyalty should be earned. But if someone in your life has become important enough to earn that loyalty, then you should be true to that loyalty to the best of your ability. ☯
Last Monday was a Civic Holiday (Saskatchewan Day for us), and most of the city was quiet and businesses were closed. My wife had the day off and since the temperature seemed pretty mild, I thought it would be an ideal day to try and achieve 70 kilometres on the bicycle. I had discussed this plan with my wife a few days prior, and given the amount of time that it would take me to reach this distance (I cycle at about an hour for every slice of 20 kilometres, give or take) she suggested that I leave during the early morning hours in order for it to be cooler outside and so that I wouldn’t lose the majority of the day to my trek.
I decided to take her advice and set my alarm for 6:30 am. I probably could have gone a bit earlier, but COVID has made me a bit lazy in my old age, and getting out of bed is a definite “not like” for me. My CGM sensor was scheduled to need replacing in the next four hours and I knew I wouldn’t be home in time, so I opted to remove it and simply run without for the duration of my trip. I loaded up the satchels on my bike with cereal bars, protein sticks, electrolytes and jelly beans. I checked the inflation on my tires and I took to the road at about 7:30 in the morning.
The first leg of my trip went flawlessly. My goal was to take a 35-kilometre route to a local community called Lumsden, stop for a light bite to eat and make my way back. My plan was to use secondary Highway 734, since it had a paved surface but would be quieter than the busy, four-lanes Highway 11. It also takes a roundabout route, allowing for a longer mileage. I had tunes going, my mileage was being tracked by my Runkeeper app and I even achieved 10 kilometres in 20 minutes, which was a speed goal I had been trying to achieve the week prior.
My view of the bright, yellow Canola fields along the highway
I managed to reach Lumsden in just short over an hour, but the route I used only took 29 kilometres! You’d think this would be a good thing, but it meant I’d have to find a different, longer route in order to get home otherwise I’d have to spend time lapping my neighbourhood streets in order to hit my 70. I examined the map and decided on a route that should have allowed me to reach my goal.
I had plenty of company on the road, despite the light traffic. Between prairie dogs, horses and cattle in the fields and the dozens of caterpillars walking about the road surface… Since it was a fairly chilly morning, the caterpillars are drawn to the asphalt’s heat, which it absorbs from the morning sun. But before I go off on a tangent, let’s get back to the ride…
One of the many fuzzy companions I encountered
Not only was I sitting on cloud nine from the speed I had used to reach Lumsden, I was pretty confident that I would be able to get back home in roughly three hours’ total, which would have signalled a whole bunch of achievements in terms of time and distance. But as I often say, life doesn’t care about one’s plans. And in this instance, nature and technology had a much different idea of how my morning would go.
First, I experienced the AWESOME pleasure of climbing the Lumsden hill on a bicycle. In case my sarcasm isn’t quite oozing through my typed words… It was ridiculous. Then I hit the top of the hill into the open area and got hit by wind. Directly. Into. My face. It was the kind of wind that brought me to a complete stop as soon as I stopped pedalling.
I know that a lot of people joke about how flat Saskatchewan is, but does there seriously have to be this much wind ALL THE TIME??? All the time I gained during the trek towards Lumsden was blown out of the water by trying to ride against the wind over the next three hours. It didn’t take long for me to become exhausted and with the lack of CGM, I was curious as to how my blood sugars were doing.
I stopped on a quiet stretch of highway and tested my blood. I was sitting at 4.1 mmol/L, which isn’t a HUGE issue but since I still had about 20 kilometres to go I thought it would be a good time to stopped for a snack. I texted my wife to let her know I was still alive and stuffed my face, followed by some electrolytes. I got back on the road and kept struggling against the wind.
Then, right in mid-song, my phone went quiet. I stopped and checked on it, only to find the the battery had died. This struck me as odd since I’ve often cycled for four hours or more and still got home with a charge. So now, not only had I lost my ability to track my progress, I also lost any means of communicating with my wife (or emergency services, if need be). There’s a certain psychological effect to recognizing that you’re in the middle of nowhere with no means to call for help, if needed.
I made my way home and realized that as I was angry at the fact it was windy. And then I realized? Is there any point to being angry at the wind? After all, the wind is a natural occurring phenomenon. It serves a number of purposes in nature. It wasn’t INTENTIONALLY making my ride tougher, despite the fact that I kept asking ti to “give me a break.”
And this is an important aspect in everyday life. We’re often faced with naturally-occurring obstacles that we have no control over and aren’t set out to make our lives difficult, despite the fact that they often do. Life doesn’t care about our plan and we have to work through or work around those obstacles accordingly. Ultimately, I managed to reach my 70 kilometres. It sucks that the phone stopped tracking at 58.9 kilometres, but at the end of the day, I still reached the mileage. So it wasn’t a wasted day, despite how blasted I was when I finally got home. ☯
I talk about suffering a lot in some of my posts, and I come by it honestly. As most Buddhists know, the acknowledgement and elimination of suffering are some of the basic concepts behind Buddhism. In fact, Buddhism at its core is based on something referred to as the Four Noble Truths. Those truths are: the existence of suffering, the cause of suffering, the end of suffering and the path required to END suffering. That last one ties into the Noble Eightfold Path, but I don’t want to delve too deeply into the religious or philosophical side of things. I wanna talk about suffering…
Dharma Wheel depicting the Noble Eightfold Path
When someone uses the word “suffering,” most people will associate it with terminal disease, war, poverty or extreme tragedy. But the reality is that suffering is a very common and everyday thing. But realistically, “suffering” is defined as “the state of undergoing pain, distress or hardship.” Tell me that there hasn’t been at least a BIT of that in your everyday life. Suffering comes in various forms and as it happens, we often don’t recognize it for what it is.
The elimination of suffering is the way to peace. Letting go of hate, stopping the propagation of aggression and allowing yourself to let go of the little things is what will ultimately lead to a happier life. This isn’t always an easy thing. In modern society, some people just want to watch the world burn. The unfortunate reality is that sometimes, you end up caught in the flames.
So when you’re reading my posts and I mention the “elimination of suffering,” this is usually what I’m referring to. No, I’m not depressed or in some deep stage of suffering, myself. I simply relate my writing to the everyday things that cause everyday hardships. And there are a lot of them. Hopefully, that answers some of the questions I’ve gotten on the subject. ☯
The world is a complicated place. There is no easy solution, when dealing with the day-to-day requirements of adult life and I’ll totally admit that there are days where I’d rather crawl into my blanket fort and colour than deal with those requirements. What’s more is that there will always be “battles” to be fought because, well… You’re an individual and your thoughts, opinions and methods won’t always match up to everyone else’s. You can’t expect to see eye-to-eye with everyone and this can become a problem, especially if that mismatch takes place between you and an employer.
One of the more important aspects of adulthood is being able to own up to your problems. As children (at least in my generation), our parents taught us to be honest about things and admit when we’ve done something wrong. Basically, the foundation for owning up to your problems has already been laid. But once childhood has melted away, a lot of us revert to blaming everything on others. And although other individuals will undoubtedly have some responsibility, it won’t be until you face up to your role in any specific issue that you can start to live with less stress.
One good example is an associate of mine that I’ve known for over twenty-five years. Good guy, good heart, he’d totally be one of those people who would drive an hour to spend the entire day helping you move your house. However… He’s one of those individuals who ALWAYS blames everything on everyone else. Even when the problem is a direct result of his actions, he still feels that he bears none of the responsibility.
Not everyone is that extreme. The person in question unfortunately butts heads with everyone in his environment; co-workers, supervisors and even the members of his household. And over just about everything! Someone took the parking spot he wants? Fight. There’s been a change in policy regarding something in his work? Refuses to do it and fights about it.
The main component of that last paragraph is to learn to pick your battles. Not everyone seems capable of this very simple thing, but some people go out of their way to try and ice-skate uphill! Honestly, when it comes to work, unless you’re the owner of your own company, sometimes it’s best to just clock in, do as you’re asked and clock out. There’s nothing wrong with voicing your opinion, but tempting faith by refusing to do things on the job is just ASKING for trouble. But I digress…
The point of today’s post isn’t necessarily about CAUSING the problems so much as it’s about taking responsibility for them. That seems to be an aspect that most people have issues with. And there are a batch of really good, yet complicated psychological and physiological reasons why most people do this. For the most part, people are programmed simply to never admit that they’re wrong. For others it can be things like having a fear of failure, appearing weak to others or being a total douche. I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist.
A had a conversation with a friend of mine named Marty, a little over a year ago when I was facing something difficult. Truth be told, I’m still neck-deep in that difficulty, but a theory he discussed got me thinking about who bears the responsibility behind the problems we face. There are always three sides to every problem in life: the part that’s your fault, the part that’s someone else’s fault and the part that’s random events outside your control.
The part that’s someone else’s fault. You don’t live on this planet alone. Because of that, things that you deal with will always have an outside component. Even when it seems as though it was something you did. The problem with this aspect, and the reason I listed it first, is because it’s the one most people tend to focus on. “How can I blame this on someone else?” is often the credo of the problem-solving millennial (I’m not limiting this concept to millennials, just to be clear)
Random events outside your control. There are elements of every problem that are simply the result of things you can’t change. A good example of this would be working on an important online project at home when a thunderstorm knocks out the power. This results in your project being lost to the ether due to the loss of internet. You can’t control the coming of a storm any more than you can control the tide or the phases of the moon… Sometimes you simply need to understand that there is LITERALLY nothing you can do to alter that aspect of the difficulty you face.
The part that’s your fault. This is the big one, the one people hate, the one people refuse to admit and deal with. See, no matter what the difficulty there are things you will have said and done that have gotten you to the here and now. This means that whether directly or indirectly, you bear some of the responsibility for where you’re at. This is where it becomes important to control one’s thoughts, words and actions in order to prevent causing and/or aggravating problems within your own life. This is not to say that you can’t offer up your opinion or voice your objections; it simply becomes a matter of picking your battles.
When you recognize the role you play in the events of your life and begin to be proactive in how you deal with, it can go a long way towards the elimination of suffering and the promotion of peace within your own life. There will always be an aspect of life that’s out of your control. And you can’t control others. You can only control yourself. I think it’s Epictetus who said, “It is not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” ☯
Do you have a personal mantra? Do you have ANY mantra? What the hell is a mantra, anyway? The term is used fairly often in modern society. Not a month goes by where I don’t hear someone say, “Oh, yes! It’s my personal mantra…” For the most part, they’re referring to some clever quip or saying that they feel has significant impact on their daily lives and/or their existence. But what is an actual mantra, and what purpose does it serve?
Simply and traditionally speaking, a mantra is defined as “a word or sound repeated to aid concentration in meditation.” Typically originating from the Hindu or Buddhist faiths, the using of a mantra focuses your active mind’s attention in such a way that it allows your thoughts and mind to float freely. It can help with relaxation and does, in fact, focus your meditation. It can be extremely handy if you’re a newcomer to the meditation scene and are having difficulty sitting still or concentrating.
That being said, I should reiterate a point I’ve often made in the past that there are various forms of meditation, from the traditional image most people have as illustrated above, to moving meditations such as Tai Chi or even Yoga. Not every method and/or form will require a mantra, and not every mantra is a simple “ohm.” It can be pretty much anything you choose, so long as it works to help you focus and concentrate.
Personally, I don’t use a mantra when I meditate. I prefer silence or some soft background music with forest or ocean sounds. By focusing on these sounds, I’m focusing my mind. I’ve usually referred to this as an “external mantra.” Silence can also be an effective mantra, since focusing solely on the silence and concentrating on it will have most of the same benefits as an active, repetitive mantra.
Depending on what school of thought you prescribe to, the use of the mantra “ohm” causes a reverberation throughout the body that religious monks believe has spiritual or religious effects on the body. I couldn’t find a stock photo to demonstrate it and I’m too cheap to buy one, but there is a Hindu symbol that represents “ohm,” (also spelled aum or om) and you can hit up Wikipedia under “mantra” if you want to see it. It’s been made popular in such a way that the symbol is represented on yoga gear, jewellery and clothing apparel.
On a last note, a personal mantra is something a bit different. This usually involves a saying or quote that resonates with a person and has a direct impact on how they live their life. Something along the lines of, “Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza…” Anyone who recognizes that quote will understand how badly I just aged myself, but it’s usually something a person repeats or states to themselves or others often but has nothing to do with an actual mantra or meditation.
Although you don’t NEED a mantra in order to meditate, it can be a handy and useful practice to help you focus and concentration when doing so. Sometimes life makes it a bit difficult to find a quiet moment to meditate and a mantra can also help block the outside world. In fact, there are some YouTube videos with hours of mantra chanting, for those who want to have a listen at what it should sound like. ☯
I used to love physics in high school. Yes, I was one of those freaks; I even took some of the advanced physics classes in my senior year for extra credit. A part of me gets a headache every time I even THINK about some of the concepts we studied in those classes, while another part of me absolutely immersed myself in it and considered it the highlight of my high school years. And no, before you ask I didn’t carry a pocket protector or have a little strip of tape holding my glasses together.
I had an interesting discussion over a week ago about the concept of karma. Much like most of us have at some point, some folks try to seek out some form of faith and are uncertain where to look. During this discussion, it was mentioned that the concept of karma was considered more as a result of cause and effect as opposed to some form of intervention from a divine presence. I think this was an interesting comment, especially since that’s basically what karma is; cause and effect.
Nature and the universe has a way of balancing itself out. Think about the course of your day and how things end up. If you walk up to a hornet’s nest and kick it, you’ll get stung. Cause and effect. And this happens in just about every aspect of our lives. Looking at it simply from a physics perspective, Isaac Newton once explained that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. He was mostly referring to the exercised forces on objects that counteract one another, but the concept is very much the same.
The so-called “Law of cause and Effect” states that every effect has a specific and predictable cause and every cause or action has a specific and predictable effect. The back and forth that takes place within this law is a result of the choices you make, the decisions you take and the path you choose to pursue in life. Sounds a bit like karma to me…🤷♂️
I could get into Einstein’s theory of special relativity and REALLY give everyone a nosebleed (myself included), but quantum physiques was never a specialty or forte of mine. If you want to seriously fall down the rabbit hole without the benefit of a net, feel free to Google “causality” and see how long it takes before you need several shots of Fireball to make the buzzing in your head come to a stop. But I digress…
Karma, such as it is, is defined as the effect on one’s life from accumulated causes they’ve generated. Yes, within Buddhist terminology, karma is considered as “the sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences.” I think that’s pretty spot on, and whether you buy into the concept of reincarnation or moving on to another form of existence, the message if pretty simple: live well and you’ll be well. Live badly and you may live badly.
Something from my Catholic upbringing is working its way up to the surface… Something about living by the sword means dying by the sword… Really, if you look closely enough at most schools of faith and even people who believe themselves to be Atheists (because believing in nothing is still believing in SOMETHING, but I’ll save that for another day), there’ll be something similar or identical to this concept.
So effectively, I’m sure you’ve noticed that those who intentionally do wrong, live a life of violence, commit crimes and harm others, usually don’t go on to retire at a ripe old age, hugging their grandchildren while sipping lemonade on the porch. There’s a lot to be said for living a “good” life and doing “good” things. No matter what your faith or your thoughts, living as pure and noble a life is what every person should aspire to. ☯
I’m usually pretty loud and wordy, a trait that I’m quite confident I inherited from my mother. Although I usually have the ability to control my volume and she’s pure-blooded French-Acadian and for a gentle woman, her voice not only carries volumes, it never stops. ANYWAY… I sincerely love my mother, so don’t interpret the above-comment as something negative.
I simply bring this up because I realize that my posts can often become long and convoluted and can be quite the read. So today, I’m keeping it simple with the above illustration. I forget where I found it; it was a couple of week’s ago. But I think it carries an important message about controlling one’s emotions and maintaining self-control when faced with the obstacles of daily life. Enjoy! ☯
The Blogging Buddhist 