At a time of stress there can be different skilful attitudes or reflections for our active mode on one hand, and for moments where we let go and rest on the other. We have a great opportunity during our active time to help out, especially if we are part of essential service provision. At this time we can find a lot of joy in simple acts of kindness and in taking care to prevent the spread of the disease. We can use a mantra like, “May you be well and happy,” to keep us going. When we have done what we can, we can rest back into a mantra such as, “I have done my best, now it’s time to rest.” And the bottom line, where we can find most peace if we reflect in the right way may be, “At the end of the day, we all have to go sometime.” We can all need someone in our lives who can manage to say this with an accepting smile. Often that is the job of the monk or nun, we train for that. As Ajahn Chah says, “If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you will have complete peace.” Actually the ideal is that we maintain both these attitudes, the active externally and the restive internally. We are the nurse outwardly and keep a little bit of monk or nun inside; or we are the monk or nun inside and keep a little bit of nurse outside. This will come naturally if we are training ourselves both ways. If we can thus keep our refuge during times of stress we will have it always with us. My mother told me a story today of a time when she was in a supermarket just before closing. Everyone was tired and rushing. One little boy became very upset and was lying on the floor kicking and screaming, his mother unable to console him. My mother got to the cash-out and the lady at the till looked exhausted. She said to her, “Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to lie on the floor and kick and scream sometimes.” The cash-out lady agreed and started to giggle. Word went down the queue. Yes it was unanimous, everybody agreed it would be nice. At a time like this I am sure many of us are going to feel like that, maybe especially those working in the hospitals. Perhaps we should set up rooms especially somewhere with nice thick mats on the floor where anyone can have a kick and a scream, and serve tea to people afterwards. The fact is that, when it comes to the body, life’s not always very fair.
My mother told me a story today. She used to have a kid in her school with Down's syndrome who needed help with things like dressing and so on. Someone always needed to hold her hand when she went out. My mother told the other kids (aged 5 to 6) that they could all be the teacher for this kid, not just my mother on her own. She put it over to them in such a skilful way that the other kids in the class got a big kick out of being able to be the teacher. They were great with this little girl. Perhaps this could be a way to get our kids happily on board at a time like this? I might have thought at one time that it would be unfair to ask a child to do such things, to take responsibility. However, since living in Asia and seeing how kids are raised there, I have had a different idea of good child-rearing than I had before. It seems to me that if kids have moments where they have to grow up, even when they are very young, then they seem to carry some of their innocent, child-like quality into their adult life. In poor parts of Asia children are often looking after a grandparent while the parents are working. People from this kind of background tend to be very natural and playful in their caring for others, especially the elderly. One thing that is particularly highlighted by the character of the coronavirus is the vulnerability of the elderly. At this time, if we are still young and strong in ourselves, it can be good to reflect that one day, if we live long enough, old age will come to us too, we will find ourselves in their shoes. If we reflect skilfully, this will cause our compassion to strengthen and we will be further moved to help and protect those at risk. Drawing closer to the elderly we can find or be reminded of the knowledge and wisdom of long experience, the power of the story. We are so used to turning to the computers these days for the answers and find ourselves flooded by abstract facts. In contrast the knowledge of the elderly is real and well-seasoned, calm and realistic. Especially at a time of crisis such wisdom can be of great benefit to us all. In a situation where the elderly are needing help this also gives them something to offer in return. We are living in a world of a massive amount of information, a world that generates statistics. We can find ourselves frightened or excited, convinced, sceptical or overwhelmed. Or all of these on the same day. Statistics can also be so impersonal. Given all this we can need to reflect to bring ourselves back to the realities behind all these numbers. Yet do we dare to do so? Actually to consider large numbers of people is recommended by the Buddha for someone contemplating death, looking for peace of mind in the face of death. There can be a good side to an impersonal view, we can take this in a good direction and calm the mind. How so? First of all there is something about large numbers that overwhelms the mind, so many! Then, if we have faith in rebirth and can consider how many lifetimes we ourselves may have been through, that all these bodies could be our bodies, this gives us a different impression. Rather than inspired by sorrow, by individual deaths we can feel disenchanted, weary with the whole process of birth and death, over and over. This perception may not sound so uplifting either! But there is, in this same perception, a refuge to faith in reincarnation rather than annihilation at the time of death. To a mind ready to let go, such a perception of the whole story could enable us to let go of the whole mass of suffering associated with the body, all at once. This is liberation. Times of crisis are when the strength of Sangha, spiritual community, often becomes apparent. If at a given moment we have no refuge in the Buddha, or clear awareness; no sense of the truth or Dhamma, then we can turn to our refuge in Sangha. This can be all we have. Right now in the monastery the whole community are cut off from their families due to border closures, we have only each other and the extended family of the lay community, we are thrown together as brothers and sisters in the Dhamma and find a way to get by. Our refuge in Sangha can also mean contacting a spiritual friend for help or advice. It can mean chanting or bowing to a shrine, many things. There were many times in my early days of practice where I felt lost, not seeing anything that could be done. Then to light a candle or chant a familiar chant could be a refuge.
This was not empty consolation but to feel part of something greater, or a reminder of better times. It was to continue the practice in some form and not give up, to connect with the good practice-karma made in the past. To smell the incense burned on that special retreat or from the favourite monastery can take us right back there… These are the kinds of things we can do no matter what may be happening. This is the strength of such a refuge in Sangha. I offer this for your reflection Ajahn Kalyāno http://www.openthesky.co.uk We cannot trust the proliferating mind or follow it even at the best of times, but even more so in times of crisis. Proliferation will get us lost in ourselves, losing the outer awareness we need to handle the situation. Worse than this, what we can notice is how the proliferating mind will always take us only in one direction or the other. If we hear news that is worse than we thought, then the proliferation will be negative, dragging us into fear or depression. If the news are better than our current perception, then the proliferation will go the opposite way and we can get over-confident and lose our proper caution.
So we must try to keep establishing our mindfulness which does not believe in the proliferation but continues to remain aware of the outside world. Then clear thinking in the present as well as meditation will override the proliferating mind. And what might be the ideal response to a time when our very lives may be threatened? The Buddha teaches us that if we can see death with a peaceful mind we can let go and see the deathless, that which goes beyond. This is the highest practice that we can be working towards by making our mindfulness more and more solid and directing this bright mind towards the body. Then we will see this brightness as separate from the body. If we can reach this level there will be no fear of death. Many great monks and nuns, very much in the public eye in Thailand, have faced death with such a lack of distress or concern. Knowing this can give us faith in the practice to help us at such a time. If at a time of crisis our whole practice seems to be falling apart we need to be able to accept this too and try to keep going. The Buddha taught us to be able to let go and start again. If we make a mistake we need to acknowledge it and then make a determination to try not to repeat it in the future. We can need to recognise our limits while at the same time work towards correcting these if possible. We can say to ourselves,
“Never mind, next time.” We can need to get in quickly with this one before our self-critical minds get going and drag us down, even hold it as a mantra! I offer this for your reflection Ajahn Kalyāno http://www.openthesky.co.uk It is natural, even healthy, to worry at a time of crisis, but if we let our proliferating mind do the worrying it will never end. Instead we have to be willing to pick up the issues with our conscious present moment mind. Then our worry can become caring. In order to do this there has to be some acceptance of the situation. We have to accept that it is our karma as human beings to have to face such times. The world is bigger than we are.
And this caring or caution need not feel bad, like a straight-jacket. Caution can feel good. To feel in control of ourselves is to feel outwardly calm and composed, dignified. As monastics we keep very many rules. If our attitude is right this does not make us feel oppressed but free; we gain an inner freedom, freedom where we really are, where we really live. We gain freedom from desire. It is desire and its resultant attachment that really enslaves us, not benevolent rules. |
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