Clouds Passing through an Empty Sky

Day Six Hundred & Six
Wednesday, February 1st 2012

It's finally February, & I have been waiting on tenterhooks for what has felt like nearly an eternity for this month to arrive. January, for whatever reason, seemed to drag, to stutter, to crawl, to move at an imperceptible pace, particularly toward the beginning & end. By my calculation, this Saturday marks the end of the fifth of the Nine Nines, a system of nine sets of nine days by which Mongolians measure the passage of winter, beginning on the winter solstice (which this year fell on December 22nd). The fourth nine, rumored to be the coldest, is over, & now the fifth is coming to a close. Though we're not out of the proverbial woods yet (& though being in any woods at this point, proverbial or otherwise, seems like a welcome change of scenery), the knowledge that the sixth nine is upon us come this Sunday is a blessing. Being past the halfway point brings with it a sense of relief & completion.

I believe that January passed in such a stupor of convoluted time because I was focusing so much on my own fantasies of America. I am a romantic at heart, as evidenced by my misguided & charmingly naïve visions of Europe, dashed upon my first visit to France when I was met with graffiti & dog droppings in such a plethora that to walk with my head held high would have inevitably resulted in soiled shoes. January had little to offer in the way of hope, it now seems in hindsight. February, however, is marked by events other than the mere passage of time. After this week, we only have two full weeks of school before the week of the Mongolian holiday Tsaagan Sar, translated as “White Moon.” This holiday is celebrated by visiting homes of friends & family members, consuming (supposedly, though last year I abstained from partaking) three shots of vodka & three buuz at each ger. Buuz, transliterated from Cyrillic but pronounced more like “boats” are a small dumpling-shaped Mongolian food, generally consisting of meat wrapped in a thin layer of flour-based dough & pinched or twisted together at the top before being steamed.

Time will continue its strange meandering, moving in both overt & indiscernible ebbs & flows as it does in Mongolia. After the reprieve that Tsaagan Sar offers, March will soon follow, & mid-month, the official completion of the Nine Nines & the end of winter will take place in theory, but preferably in reality as well. If anything, having small landmarks, holidays, & events to look forward to is key. I have been doing a lot of self-searching as of late, reading Buddhist literature & indulging in various podcasts (from zencast.org, recommended to me by a friend last year such that I downloaded a myriad whilst in UB over the past several journeys there). I feel much more present, centered, & conscious of my life.

To quote a passage from “A Path with Heart” by Jack Kornfield, “Buddhist cartography & the map of the Elders describe six realms of life that can be experienced by consciousness. The most painful of the six realms is a variety of unending hell realms, domains characterized by an intensity of pain, fire, icy cold, & torture. The highest of the realms are the heaven realms, states filled with pleasure, angelic beings, rapture, celestial music, delight, & peace. Between these extremes are two visible realms, the animal & human realms. The animal realm is often characterized by fear (eat or be eaten) & dullness, while the human realm is said to have the right balance of enough pleasure & pain to be optimal for spiritual awakening. The final two realms are realms of spirits. One is a realm of power struggle called the realm of the jealous & warring gods, a domain of territoriality & titanic struggle. The other is a realm of intense desire called the realm of the Hungry Ghosts, characterized by beings with pinhole mouths & enormous bellies who can never be fulfilled in their seeking or longing. In a simple way, all these realms can be seen as mythological & poetic descriptions of human experience in this very life. Great anger & rage put us into the hell realm, strong addictions make us into hungry ghosts, & wonderful sense pleasures of beautiful thoughts transport us to heaven.”

I essentially interpret this knowledge as somewhat of a floor-plan to a house with many rooms. The house is my current experience, & the rooms are the realms, each containing a different interpretation of what is happening around me, to me, within me. According to the book “Zen & the Art of Happiness” by Chris Prentiss, everything in our lives can be interpreted as something meant specifically for us. Every downfall or difficulty can be seen in the light of “This is happening for a reason. This event is exactly what I need in my life right now, for better or for worse. What can I learn from what I am experiencing? What good things will these circumstances lead me to?” Sometimes, the best lessons in life are found in the challenges rather than pleasantries. More to the point, some of the best teachers in life come from the difficult people (miserable creatures though they may be).

As Kornfield writes, “...the true path to liberation is to let go of everything” [italics in original text] which echoes a pertinent teaching from Achaan Chah, “If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have even more peace.” The passing of events, emotions, circumstances, & moments of happiness or great suffering can be experienced “like clouds passing through an empty sky,” held in a kind & interested attention, noticed rather than judged, acknowledged rather than forsaken or condemned.

During a conversation with one of my closest friends yesterday, we began to wonder why certain people affect us so much in life in contrast to the people who don't. We concluded that it must have to do with some level of personal investment. We are affected by others not because particular people are more powerful or more persuasive, but because we choose to care about certain people over others, permitting some into our lives on deeper levels while not making the same allowances for others. We are affected, in essence, because we allow ourselves to be. I have found myself to be almost inexplicably apt at distancing myself completely when an angry boss takes his anger & frustration out on his employees. These situations, I regard with objective distance. I am able to step back & view the situation from a standpoint of “your problem, not mine” –perhaps because as a subordinate, I don't have to take on the immense responsibilities that the role of boss entails.

In a family or friendship situation, it isn't always so easy to be a bystander. That same boss could chastise employees for one reason or another & I find myself silently attuned to an emotion akin to subdued amusement à la “You're kind of cute when you're mad!” noting how childlike, not to mention unflattering & unbecoming, such anger is when it is expressed aloud, particularly in a public forum. If similar utterances were directed at me by a family member or friend, the effect is suddenly much different. Is this because I care more? Is it because I tend to regard those I choose to surround myself with as equals? I am learning, albeit with much difficulty, that equality is not necessarily the case, nor is it merely in the eye of the beholder. In the beholding eye of yours truly, I wish everyone I love in my life were an equal. I wish all the people I care about had the ability to love themselves, to express themselves fully & succinctly, to be able to solve their issues creatively, to disrobe their bindings of insecurities & self-doubt, to meet issues & others from a place of love rather than a place of fear, distrust, or past hurt. The list goes on, & I have come to find that this particular level of inter-friendship equality is not a birthright, but an achievement. Understanding, in other words, is not born, it is made.

Loving myself means putting myself first, an unfortunate contrast to my nature. I feel at peace & as though I have purpose when I am helping others through problems, when I am a shoulder to cry on, when I am an inspiration both to others as well as myself. I am the friend who will be there for you at 2AM even though I might have a final exam the next day. Unfortunately, as I am coming to discover, loving myself does not include these sacrifices, or at least not to the extent to which I have made such sacrifices in my life. Loving myself means protecting my time, my privacy, my body, my home, my health, myself. Loving myself means saying goodbye first on the phone if dinner is ready, though I admit to being that person who will set everything aside for someone else. Putting myself on the so-called back burner, even so simplistically as in situations like answering the phone when I'm otherwise busy, has done me no favors.

Advice from a friend years & years ago resonates with me now. “People don't value what they don't have to work for.” Little wonder, then, that the friendships in which I had invested so much & for which I had made great sacrifices no longer survive to the present intact. No wonder at all that I haven't heard from certain people (during my time here in Mongolia in particular) when, for years of our friendship, my actions were training them into a state of complacency. Oprah once said “You teach people how to treat you,” & looking back, I now realize that I taught people how to take me for granted.

Another example of my past behavior happened when I was in UB last spring, staying at a fellow volunteer's apartment on the far side of town from the centrally-located usual Peace Corps haunts. A friend called me to say they had just gotten into town that morning, & that they were at a cafe by the State Department Store, easily several miles from where I was staying. Could I come meet them there? Of course I could. “Well, hurry up!” I was told, & I barely gave myself time to breathe as I walked as fast-paced as I could to the cafe. Though my arrival there a breathless forty or so minutes later was well-met, looking back, I wish I had saved myself the sadness I now feel remembering the situation. Not ten minutes later, the group of volunteers who were there including the one I was supposed to meet decided to leave. More to the point, the volunteer went back to the guest house to take a shower –while I waited.

Another excerpt from “A Path with Heart” reveals “In his last words, the Buddha said we must be a lamp unto ourselves, we must find our own true way.” Perhaps, in the example I just described, if I had valued my own time more enough to say “What are your plans for today?” or “Why don't we meet for lunch at 2 o' clock instead?” then my time would have been valued by the other person. If I had shown respect for my time, perhaps by time would have been respected. I have stumbled countless times into periods of sheer suffering due to my inability to push past my perceived boundaries of what is considered polite just for the sake of another person. I effectually have given others permission to take myself, my courtesy, my time, my willingness to help, my creativity, my friendship for granted. If in the past I had simply clarified “What time?” “When?” “How long?” “Can you give me a better idea of when that might be?” when a friend said they'd call me “sometime later maybe,” I could have saved myself a lot of waiting, a lot of self-doubt, & I could have avoided feeling used or abandoned by someone I cared about.

A meditation described by Jack Kornfield in his work helped me to gain some clarity today. He writes “After you have read through the next three paragraphs, close your eyes & picture yourself in the middle of an instance of one of the greatest difficulties in your life. It may be a difficulty at work or it may be in a personal relationship. You can remember it, picture it, imagine it, think about it, feel it–whatever way your heart & mind best sense it. Let yourself reexperience the scene vividly, the people who are there, the difficulties & how you react to them. Let it reach its worst height. Notice how your body feels in the midst of this & how you act & what state your heart is in.

Then imagine that there is a knock on the door that you must answer. Excuse yourself & step outside, where you find waiting for you someone like the Buddha, Mother Mary, or the great Goddess of Universal Compassion. One of these beings has come to visit you. They look at you kindly & ask, 'Having a hard day? Here,' they suggest, 'let me trade places with you. Give me your body & let me show you how I might handle this situation. You can remain invisible while I show you what is possible.' So you lend your body to the goddess or Buddha, Jesus or whomever, & invisibly follow them back into the thick of your difficulties. Let the conversation & problems continue as before, & simply notice what you are being shown. How does Jesus, Buddha, Mary, or whoever respond to the situation? With silence? With what energy? What words do they choose? What is the state of their body? Let them show you the way. Stay with them while they teach you.

Then they will excuse themselves again for a moment & walk back to the place where you met them. They lovingly return your body to you, & before they leave, they touch you gently in the most healing way & whisper a few words of advice into your ear. Listen to these heartfelt words of wisdom & kindness. Hear them, imagine them, sense them, know them in whatever way you can, & let them be just what you need to live wisely.”

To be honest, my first reaction to this meditation was “No, I don't want anyone else to get hurt” when I thought about reliving a difficult experience & trading bodies with another being. It was then that a part of me realized I was trying to protect someone else before myself, the very lesson I am struggling to grasp, & even in the circumstance of meditating where no person could be harmed in any way (least of all someone like the Buddha or Earth Mother). I closed my eyes, remembering, noting how my breathing became more strained, how my body tensed, how restless my mind seemed to become. Letting go, the cheek of my spiritual face held lovingly in a soft & pleasantly cool hand, I received the following advice: “You are better than other people's problems. You are worth more than your perceived failures through the eyes of others.”