So, happy 2011, and also Happy 60^th birth­day (Jan. 3) to me! Yes, I know. I don’t look a day over 50…

I’ve been read­ing Lama Surya Das’ book, “Bud­dha Is as Bud­dha Does: The Ten Orig­i­nal Prac­tices for Enlight­ened Liv­ing
‚” and I’m quite enjoy­ing it. Rather than directly quot­ing it, I’ll just retell a story from the book, and pro­vide three end­ings, as opposed to the two pre­sented in the book.

A woman moved to Jerusalem, and her apart­ment over­looked the Wail­ing Wall. Each morn­ing, she saw 3 men arrive together, and begin pray­ing. She left for work, and came back at lunch, and there they were. When she returned just before sup­per, the men were still there.

After a few months, she went down and asked them about what they were doing. They said, “We arrive together in the morn­ing, and all morn­ing we pray for world peace. We then go for lunch, return in the after­noon, and pray that all peo­ple will have access to food, shel­ter and med­i­cine. We’ve been doing this for years.”

The woman asked, “How has it been for you?”

The first replied, “Like talk­ing to a wall!”

The sec­ond said, “Imag­ine how bad things would be if we hadn’t prayed!”

The Zen guy said, “When pray­ing, I pray with all my atten­tion. Then, I go home.”

It seems impos­si­ble that we might act with­out thought of result—without demand­ing the out­come be as we think it ought to be. It’s sim­i­lar to ask­ing “why” ques­tions: “Why did my par­ents raise me the way they did?” “Why do (wo)men treat me the way they do?” “Why won’t my part­ner coöper­ate with me by doing it my way?”

Such ques­tions have no answers, other than, “Because that is what hap­pened. Now, move on!”

My mother-in-law has a counted cross stitch I her bath­room or a bear glar­ing at him­self in the mir­ror. I below, “It reads, “I’ll smile if you will.” Then below, “You go first.” It’s sim­i­lar to a client assur­ing me that she is totally com­mit­ted to using the com­mu­ni­ca­tion model… just as soon as her part­ner agrees, and uses it per­fectly first.

In a sense, wis­dom is know­ing that your job is always and ever to “go first.” To do what you must, to act with clar­ity and swift­ness, and then to do it again. To act, and to let it go. Because in the end, what will be, will be. (Que sera, sera…)

I once worked with a cou­ple; she was a stu­dent ther­a­pist, and had been to Haven. Accord­ing to her, every­thing wrong with the rela­tion­ship was his fault. They came to a Body­work train­ing week­end, and we were doing breath­ing. He was breath­ing, she was coach­ing, but was actu­ally sob­bing. I wan­dered over, and asked what the issue was.

“He’s doing it all wrong and he won’t lis­ten to me, just like always!”

I looked at his tech­nique, and said, “He’s doing great, in his own way.”

She sighed, and the next week, quit therapy.

It’s odd, to think about act­ing with­out con­sid­er­ing our imag­i­nary outcomes. 

Just hang­ing around. You???

And yet, it is often the out­comes we imag­ine that freeze us in place—that keep us from act­ing. Or, we are so lost in the imag­i­nary plea­sure we cre­ate in our chargy men­tal sto­ries, that again, we are frozen into inac­tiv­ity. Or, we refuse to act because of the non-conforming behav­iour of others.

Yet, all we can do is to act, given who we are and what we know, right now.

In other words, once I have deter­mined a course of action, I must act with­out recourse to any knowl­edge of what lies down the road. I act because action is called for.

And some­times, the action called for is “no action.” A thing almost inconceivable.

Incon­ceiv­able because we for­get that non action is dif­fer­ent from inac­tion. Non action is a state of active sta­sis, while inac­tion is “just sit­ting there, doing noth­ing.”

Sort of like med­i­ta­tion. Med­i­ta­tion is non-action. It super­fi­cially seems like “sit­ting there, doing noth­ing,” when in fact it is one of the most alive and active states one can choose to be in.

Briefly, back to the three guys.

First of all, they obvi­ously have cho­sen to act. There they are, day after day.

The first guy clearly thinks he’s talk­ing to a wall. And of course, he is. It’s clear, how­ever, that he is offer­ing up prayers to some­one with the expec­ta­tion that he will be heeded. “Here, “god,” is my plan for my life and for the life of the world. Now, you just tod­dle off and make it hap­pen.” As if “god” is a celes­tial concierge—give “him” a tip and he ful­fills your every desire, and all with a smile.

Guy two, the per­pet­ual opti­mist, looks around him and assumes what guy 1 does not—that “god” has indeed acted exactly as he has sug­gested, and so he there­fore imag­ines not a bet­ter future, but how bad things would have got­ten, had he not intervened.

The third, Zen guy, for rea­sons unex­plained (and let me tell you, you do not owe any­one an expla­na­tion… no one is inter­ested!), has cho­sen to pray. He has even selected some things to pray for. He sees his “job” as to hold these prayers in his heart and mind, as purely and com­pletely as he can. Period.

In this, his action is clear, present, and pure. Noth­ing more to do, to con­tem­plate. He is thus free to act. Again and again.

Every­thing we do has con­se­quences, even as we choose to wait and see. There is no way to see into the future, and “wishin’, hopin’, and prayin’” is just that. We ever and always start “right here, right now, as it is.” Pipedreams and mag­i­cal think­ing lead to tread­ing water.

Accep­tance and tak­ing a step, how­ever, has some seri­ous possibility.

You can’t un-ring a bell

Finally, as I cross the thresh­old of a new decade-birthday, I am aware of the real­ity of all of the above the­ory. I have been reflect­ing on a lot of things for the last 4 weeks. Life and death, oppor­tu­ni­ties and dra­mas, friends found and friends lost. The above bell quote “rings true” (couldn’t resist…) for me.

We in actu­al­ity do walk along a path, or swim in a stream. The old line about swim­ming with the stream is so. Noth­ing stops us from swim­ming upstream, but in no way do we get any­where. Time, choices, and direc­tions are set in stone the minute we act.

I have sev­eral friends, right now, who are not act­ing for fear of not get­ting what they want, or for fear of crit­i­cism. Some­how, they are miss­ing that day after day, after year, time is flow­ing away. Their inac­tion is not neu­tral. They are piss­ing away their lives, waiting.

Other friends are end­lessly regret­ting their lives and deci­sions, adding their own “whip­ping” to the one they think the world has given them.

In the last month, have indulged in think­ing or imag­in­ing where I would be today if I had taken the “other” path at sig­nif­i­cant junc­tures. I can say I have been thor­ough, in my exam­i­na­tion, and I now am ready to tell you.

If I had made other deci­sions, I would be elsewhere!

And yet, after all of that, here I am.

I am pleased to be here, and fully cog­nizant of the deci­sions I have made to get here. I regret none of it, and would take none of it back. I am here with Dar, and a few sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers, and enjoy­ing my pres­ence with them. I hold oth­ers in my heart—some who have died, oth­ers who have drifted away. It’s all exactly as it is.

Not bad for an old guy, eh?

Happy birth­day to me, indeed!