Some­times, you’ve just gotta stop the traffic.

I had a semi-interesting expe­ri­ence in Port Elgin, a “beach town” on Lake Huron, in Ontario—I had an office there for almost a decade.

The place is a zoo, traf­fic wise, dur­ing the summer.

My office was across the four lanes of the main drag from my favourite restau­rant. Many were the times that I (im)patiently stood on the side­walk, wait­ing for the traf­fic let up enough so I could dodge through and (like the chicken) get to the other side. In the Sum­mer there were always cars, and they were always moving.

Imag­ine my sur­prise, then, this par­tic­u­lar afternoon.

Lunch in hand, I approached the the street, and there, in the right hand traf­fic lane, was a car, parked. In a traf­fic lane. Inside the dor­mant vehi­cle was an elderly cou­ple, talk­ing and ges­tur­ing. Behind them, lined up in a neat row, were 10 or 20 cars.

All were stopped. And all was silent.

The lit­tle old man stepped out of his parked car, map in hand. He ambled back to the car behind him. The dri­ver of the sec­ond car rolled down his win­dow, and the two began to look at the map, talk­ing and gesturing.

I took the oppor­tu­nity to cross the street.

I looked back. The old man returned to his car, got in, buck­led up and resumed dri­ving. The rest of the cars filed along. Now, dur­ing this whole thing, which took maybe 2 min­utes, not one horn was blown, and none of the peo­ple in the line pulled out around the parked car. (We could assume this was because this is Canada as opposed to the King­dom to the South of us, but I have heard the occa­sional horn here in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions, and hey, Van­cou­ver Hockey Riot, right?)

I thought,

1. either this guy needed infor­ma­tion really badly, and got it from extremely polite folk, or
2. that he was the leader of a parade of cars, and the rest were his obe­di­ent fol­low­ers, or
3. all of this was planned for me to see, and was yet another celes­tial joke.

I’m going with option 3.

This reminds me of another story from Sto­ries From the Sea of Life, my first (out of print) book. It goes like this:

What both of the above sto­ries indi­cate, for me, is the incred­i­ble amount of “data” that’s avail­able for us, all the time. If we notice. Some of it is exter­nal, and vast stores of expe­ri­ence and data is internal.

Now, we do notice the stuff we judge to be neg­a­tive. The looks, the words, the ges­tures, the games we choose to set our­selves off over–we notice the “shit” in spades. But what about the pos­i­tive mes­sages, the mes­sages that seem to be designed to help us fig­ure our­selves out?

As I think about the lit­tle old guy climb­ing out of his car in traf­fic, I was drawn to a mes­sage about my life. Many are the times when I need to stop, to slow down, to go to the peo­ple I trust, to ask for direc­tion, for clar­ity. I tend to put that off until I’m so tired or tied up in knots that I have no choice but to force myself to do something.

This is inelegant

Too often, the lure of “the world” is to go faster, to do more, to rise to the top quickly. Yet, after 30 years of coun­selling all kinds of peo­ple, I’ve never met any­one who says,

“And all of that dash­ing and push­ing and rush­ing and rac­ing, all that ignor­ing my inner pas­sions, got me a mean­ing­ful life. ”

No, instead I hear tales of a vague dis­quiet; I hear expres­sions of mean­ing­less­ness or purposelessness.

When our mean­ing comes from what we do or

what we have, instead of who we are,

we are bound to hit a wall.

Bet­ter, I think, to find a men­tor or ther­a­pist and reach out (and to your part­ner, or to a really good friend) and take the time (say, the rest of your life…) to begin to plumb the heights and depths of whom you are. We are given an unknown “length of days” in which to find our­selves. Being end­lessly lost in “your wounded inner child” or what you think your par­ents did to you, or your part­ner did, or how hard done by you are, sim­ply leads to more of the same.

Beyond all of the “stuff” that hap­pened to each of us (our “back story”—and there’s noth­ing… noth­ing! we can do about that!) is the truth of our self. The point for our exis­tence. But we can’t get there if we’re con­stantly look­ing out­side for who we are inside.

Here’s a lit­tle free verse poem I wrote to a 16 year old client

About Nishka­makarma, which means—Do your duty, with faith in “God,” with­out attach­ment to the fruit of your action.

I don’t exactly remem­ber where I first heard that term, but I liked it enough to write it down and turn it into posters (one of many) that used to hang in my coun­selling office. When Dar and I were think­ing about names for the dog, we were sit­ting in my “home” office, I noticed the poster and said, “How about Nishka?” We both loved the name.

She was a won­der­ful dog.

There is a cer­tain rhythm and ele­gance to things that come in threes. Like the three clauses in Nishkamakarma.

The first clause, “Do your duty,” is a clear reminder that life is voca­tional. It may seem that we get involved in the things that we do in a ran­dom way. Yet, there is a “pull” toward a spe­cific way of being. Thus, it’s not impor­tant what we do; what is impor­tant is how we do what we do, for what reason.

Voca­tional think­ing and act­ing often seems to be about “ser­vice,” about being a part of a help­ing pro­fes­sion, or so it appears at first blush. I remem­ber, though, how many busi­ness exec­u­tives I’ve worked with, who caught on to the duty-vocation “thing,” and who worked within cor­po­ra­tions as enablers and empower-ers.

The sec­ond clause, “With faith in “God” … ”

I’m not con­vinced that every­one needs to “get” the God thing. I have many friends who would clas­sify them­selves as athe­ists, but who are relent­less in their search for mean­ing and self-hood. On the other hand, I’ve also met a ton of peo­ple who have lots of beliefs, and very lit­tle peace of mind, whose rigid­ity is inexhaustible.

As a Sim­ple Zen Guy, I believe we are all Bud­dhas, and just don’t know it. Thus, faith is all about admit­ting that I don’t know very much at all, but that some­thing pro­found is going in, all the time. It seems to me that there’s some kind of sys­tem in place that keeps pro­vid­ing me with the lessons and expe­ri­ences I need. I could call that sys­tem or expe­ri­ence “God,” but I pre­fer “the cos­mos,” or the celes­tial classroom.

As you’ve gath­ered from my sto­ries, I really do believe that the com­mu­ni­cates by send­ing events and peo­ple into my life. I need only notice and listen.

The third clause, “With­out attach­ment to the fruit of your action.” This is actu­ally the hard part, at least for me. This part is about being will­ing to do what you do because that’s what you do, with­out need­ing to be rewarded, sin­gled out, noticed.

The walk is walked for the walk’s sake, not for the ado­ra­tion of the crowds. Not easy.

Attach­ments are easy to find. We sim­ply think about what we are not will­ing to give up. Titles. Rela­tion­ships. Money. Being declared “right.” What­ever. If you have one (we all do …) then your life is deter­mined for you, not by your voca­tion, not by much of any­thing but by what you won’t give up.

Non-attachment is what Ram Dass once called “nobody spe­cial training.”

So, for me, Nishka­makarma is a total pack­age call­ing. It calls me into self-knowledge, self-awareness, and into a place of see­ing who I am, which is demon­strated, among other ways, by what I do. It calls me into con­tin­u­ally let­ting go of those things I am still attached to, because they keep my focus on my self cre­ated drama, and I pull my atten­tion away from “ser­vice.” And it calls me deeper into my Self– into my authen­tic­ity, my energy, my dance, and my exploration.

What is your duty? What is your “faith?” And what are you attached to?