Earlier today, I hugged a coworker of mine (I needed a hug) and told him, "you know that part in The Green Mile when John Coffey says how the hate and meanness of other people feels like bees stinging him? I feel like that all the time." It's true. I don't mean to be overly dramatic, but one of my biggest challenges at work is being around rampant free expression of hate and negativity. Whether I am weak of character, or whether I have subconsciously decided on a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach, or whether some natural social mechanism has merely run its course, I have started expressing hate and negativity more freely, too. Back at prototype, when I told one of the staff instructors that I aspired to ordain and train as a buddhist monk, he advised that I get out of the navy as soon as I could. "It might change you," he said. He's right. It's hard to say which causes me more grief: the anger and vitriol from those around me or the anger and vitriol from me, myself. Whichever it is, I definitely struggle with both every day.
I do often feel that either through birth or upbringing (or some
combination), I am endowed with a deep-seated, abiding empathy which
(and I didn't realize this until recently) A LOT of people lack. It seems like most people do not have feelings in response to negativity, whether others' or their own. It seems like many people just don't consider others' feelings a factor in their decision-making process. Not to toot my own horn, but I often ask the question "how will this impact others?" when choosing my actions. But (just to pick one example) on numerous occasions, the toilets in the bathroom for which reactor controls division (of which I am part) is responsible have gotten backed-up and even overflowed because someone has flushed underwear. Such a person is obviously anti-social, just wants to watch the world burn, gets a fucked-up thrill from causing trouble for other people. I fantasize about catching someone doing this red-handed: I would kick them with my steel-toe boot using my full strength square in the gut, then proceed to bash their head into the hardest, closest object to us. Now, of course, if I ever did do such a thing, my navy career would be over. Would I feel enough satisfaction from such violence to justify it? I doubt it. Would this individual "learn a lesson"? I really think that if they aren't already considering the impact they have on other people, getting the shit beat out of them wouldn't help. So actually, all this hatred and negativity is just festering inside me, causing me pain. But I yearn so desperately to do SOMEthing about this situation and others like it.
I feel like I got some small peek into how buddhism fits into all this at dinner this evening. I went out to a nice-ish restaurant. It had a sort of industrial, rustic décor, with the standard fare one might expect for such a place: a pork dish, a steak, some appetizers, some fish, lots of wine...entrées priced around $18-42. After considering the various options, I decided to get the "Catch of the Day." I liked the preparation described by the menu, and none of the other options seemed as appealing. I was going to ask what the "Catch of the Day" was, but then I realized I didn't care. I had already made up my mind. All that that information could serve to do would be to make me feel better about my decision. I overheard a guy at another table asking questions about the fish. At first, I thought about how all life is chaos and that people like that guy were desperately just trying to feel like they had some kind of control over it. Then I realized I had been about to do the same thing. Wouldn't it be something if we could both just be happy we had $20+ to spend on one fish meal that evening? I passed a few homeless on the walk to the restaurant and another couple on the walk back. I gave them nothing. Whether it's fish or flushed underwear, life is constant chaos. A lot of suffering results directly from ignorance of this truth.
When I realized that I was doing the same thing as that guy, when I realized that the fish and the underwear were different manifestations of the same phenomenon, that's when I felt like I might have an inkling of what it means to practice buddhism. We are all trying to control chaos, and we all suffer for it. Rather than be a judgmental prick, I should endeavor to stop trying to control it and just sympathize with others for their suffering and suffer in my own way along with them. I heard that equanimity was the willingness to endure whatever is arising. That's a really good way to put it. And even if whatever is arising isn't exactly what I imagined as something I could endure, still I must try to endure it. It's a struggle. But, as my teacher Jane Schneider said: "The struggle is the only real. Success is nothing."
Motivational quote of the damned century...
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