Can Insults Make You Tougher?

We have a toddler in our family. Certain sights /sounds/tastes/emotions attract him but the rest of the world just makes him cry. He is sensitive about whom he goes to. Makes sense. He has come into a world not of his making. A world which is a mixture of the pleasing and the scary. He is protecting himself. But then as adults we mature in our outlook. Or do we?

We surround ourselves with the objects that please us, the music of our liking, the people with whom we feel a kinship. Then there are those other areas of town we never stray into. The people of whom we are suspicious. The strange smells and textures of ‘foreign’ cuisines. All that falls into the ‘other’ which we avoid and we also advise our children to avoid marrying.

It seems to me this instinctive self-preservation we come into this world with, remains with us  of our lives. Unless, that is, we challenge it.

I had one such opportunity this week. Most of the guys I give free haircuts to are very polite and grateful. To serve them with love is really no effort at all. Then sat Mr. John Sebastian in my barber’s chair. He glared at me from the start with a look I recognized from my distant childhood. A look of unmitigated contempt. I suspected he was a racist and an overt one at that.

He did not disappoint. He came out with multiple slurs against various racial minorities (while carefully avoiding references to mine). He said nothing original, the same tired words we have all heard many times before. I knew at the outset whatever I did for him would be scorned and his dissatisfaction would be vocal. Sure, I could have refused to cut his hair. I could have reported him to the manager, a woman of obvious African ancestry. I chose not to. Not out of weakness, but as a test of strength. I wanted to push the limits of my ability to see merit in everyone–especially those biased against me.

O it is easy to see the goodness in those who are good to you. Any toddler can do that. But to see the goodness in a man despite his blatant contempt for me? Now that’s a challenge. I was grateful to him for that.

In my volunteer work I usually look for the goodness in others by focusing on the light in their eyes. It is this light which is pure consciousness. The same consciousness which gives life to my own body.

But when I looked into his eyes, I was continually met a look of contempt. Can I look past that at the life force which enlivens his body? The body’s electricity, as it were, which is impartial to what action and words it illuminates.

As I snipped and combed I observed his negativity with a neutral, disinterested eye. I did the same with the emotions it was bringing up within me. In the past I have fiercely spoken out against racial bias. I don’t hesitate to call people out on it. Some people are so overtly racist I have avoided their company. He would have been one of them. But here I was giving him loving service.

Later that same day, our condo had its Annual General Meeting. A kindly and gentle neighbor ( a white woman) whom I had never met before instantly displayed profuse and undeserved  love towards me. The complete opposite of the abuse earlier that day. It seemed to me that on this day life had chosen to show me its fearful symmetry.

William Blake wrote: “Tiger, tiger, burning bright

In the forest of the night

What immortal hand or eye

could frame thy fearful symmetry”

The day was bookended by displays of hatred and love in equal measure. Fearful symmetry indeed!

That night, as I reflected on the day’s events, I wondered if perhaps all of life is in such balance. Perhaps  over the years the love and laughter we receive is duly balanced by pain and contempt. I realize the young man spewed bile because he was filled with that at this particular juncture in his life. Similarly, the elderly woman oozed love and warmth because that is the contents of her mind at this moment in her life.

And me? I was a witness to both. I didn’t take the woman’s love personally, neither did I take the young man’s wrath personally. I feel just that little bit stronger for having done this experiment. It is the kind of strength I suspect Mahatma Gandhi must have cultivated before he took on the British Empire. Stayagraha, which is sometimes translated as truth force, has to be about adhering to that inner light in those who vocally proclaim hatred against you. It has to encompass both the pleasing and the repulsive. Isn’t that what growing up is about?

Difference Between Bias And Belief

Does God hate tolerance?

I have been volunteering at a Christian homeless shelter for more than a couple of years. As a non-Christian, I was prepared for turning the other cheek to the various Bible quotes plastered on walls. I routinely declined invitations to join their Sunday church service. I even tolerated a few not-so-subtle digs at ‘my philosophy’. I consider myself very accepting of different faiths and creeds, if (and it is a giant if) they respect mine. In other words, I do not tolerate intolerance.

Sometimes it is hard to determine if a faith group is merely being themselves, or are they acting upon an evangelical impulse.

I have been in the throws of such a dilemma with this homeless shelter. For me a life of awareness means being conscious of my biases within my relationships. I always try to be objective about my motives. I question my attachments and expectations. I challenge my fears, I scrutinize my prejudices. I think these things make being a mature adult so rewarding. In my youth I lived by my passions. Some people and situations would repulse me, while I would become obsessed by others. Not an intelligent way to live.

Just when I thought I had it all figured out, the shelter decided to play gospel tapes over the loud speaker while I was cutting hair in that room. My objection to that was on several levels. I prefer silence because I enjoy listening to the men as they open up about themselves in the barber’s chair. It is the main reason I do this. But what bothered me more was this uneasy sense that I was being targeted for proselytization.

After each session, they would “praise Jesus” for the “fine work you are doing.” I grew uncomfortable with the way the food restrictions of the clients were dismissed. Men who did not eat pork were given no consideration, neither were vegetarians. “We are a Christian organization and we serve according to the Gospel.”

I really had to have a long hard think about why I was feeling so uneasy going there nowadays. Was I becoming intolerant of their right to practice their faith? Was I turning anti-Christian? Or was it that I had observed one incident too many where they had breached the boundary of respectful behavior?

I have to admit it was not easy to separate out my personal emotions from the altruistic ones. If it were boundary issues, I knew the thing to do was re-negotiate. I attempted to speak to those in charge about my feelings and, to a man, everyone of them was dismissive of my concerns. “You knew what we were before you joined. If you don’t like it, leave.” I was told in more padded language, but it amounted to that.

If I left, would I be abandoning the men? Was it fair to punish them for the wrongs of others? And so I gritted my teeth and kept coming back, each time less and less happy to be there.

Confused about my feelings, I turned to the homeless men themselves for advice. It was they who told me about how powerless they felt with what they were subjected to. Most of the shelters in the city are faith-based and each offers help to the needy tinged by their biases. While none are overtly discriminatory, they express it in the choices they offer, and the biases towards whom they help the most.  No dogs. You can’t sleep here unless you are sober. Preferential treatment for the guys who attend bible study.

Of the dozens of shelters, only a couple were secular. I decided to check them out. Both these shelters provide vegetarian  as well as non-pork options for the men. Both places had a spontaneous, chaotic energy about them. They were more flexible than the faith-based shelters, more willing to improvise in doing the needful. I felt at home with them. It occurred to me that this was because these secular workers had no other agenda than to help those who were in need of help. Because they were helping as one human being towards another, without a middle “man”, there was more of a willingness to accommodate. The faith-based charities defer to rules and authority. That Christian shelter was always quick with a reason why something could not be done.

I realized that there is close kinship between bias and belief. I don’t even know if the two can be segregated. While I strive in my spiritual journey to be free of all biases, embracing the world exactly as it is, l  also acknowledge that there are times when I need to take a stand. While I still respect all religions, I cannot tolerate discrimination, cruelty or violence in the name of any religion. Even when that violence is subtle and unintentional.

It is my core belief that faith is a matter of personal choice. No one should impose his or her religion upon another. The one true path is the one that works for you.

I have resigned from the faith-based shelter. I am not abandoning the men, I will cut hair at one of the secular homeless shelters instead. That may be a personal bias of mine, but for now it fits my belief.

Is There A Formula For Happiness?

If there were some secret formula for happiness, whoever discovers it would surely make a fortune. The MBA grads had written their final exam. One more day of classes remained. So the students and their prof attempted to tabulate the formula for human happiness. Philosophers have pondered it, poets have mused over it and psychologists have analyzed it. Now the number-crunchers have come up with a profit and loss statement where the bottom line is  happiness.

They decided there were three sources of happiness revenue: Genetic, Circumstantial, and Relationships.

Circumstantial happiness was defined as that happiness derived from the accident of birth, such as being born in a well-off country. It was assigned a meagre 10% of the happiness quotient. I know from my own observation that people in the slums of Mumbai are as happy, if not happier, than the residents of Beverly Hills. As long as the basics of food, shelter and security are met, the luxury with which these are addressed only adds an incremental percentage to overall happiness. Other circumstantial factors might included being born male in a patriarchal society. Being heterosexual almost anywhere. Being tall, good looking, and is many places, white.

It turns out that in study after study, these types of factors certainly contribute to an easier life, but they do not in themselves make a person happier or more miserable. I am always amused by people who invest in new noses, boobs, even increasing their height. Initially they experience a boost in happiness, but it declines sharply. It is ironic that their return of happiness turns out to be more short lived than the torturous pain and the financial burden.

In my family  we have strong cultural myth that marrying into a good family is vital for a happy life. But now we have the spectacular example Princess Diana to answer that. Despite her high status marriage, we know she was far from happy. It is far preferable being single than trapped in a miserable marriage.

Other common circumstances widely believed as necessary for happiness include: a suitable education, a respectable career (which of course brings with it designer clothes and fancy cars).  Yes, they add something to the happiness quotient initially, but soon the novelty wears out. The human brain is highly elastic, hence it adapts to the new circumstances. I was impressed that these newly minted MBAs were aware that the euphoria of their achievement will fade. I am glad they are prepared for the reality that in a few years they will be no happier than they were prior to spending the $100 grand in tuition.

Having children then, will that make a person fulfilled for life? It seems the happiness that children bring is offset by the lifelong worry for their safety, the stress of good parenting and financial worries of providing for them. I cannot imagine the horror of those parents whose children go missing. Add to that fear, parents have to worry about what kind of world their children are about to inherit. Food shortages, water shortages, even breathable air will be a luxury in the not too distant future. On balance, the asset of having children are entirely offset by the liabilities. Childless people live as long as parents, and they report being just as fulfilled.

Relationships: The grads decided that a whopping 40% of the happiness revenue comes from non-material things such as being connected to others through family, friendships, and hobbies. This includes volunteer work which feeds a feeling of worth and of giving back to the community.

Genetic: To which they assigned the remaining 50% of happiness revenue. Basically, they argued, some people are born psychologically better equipped to be more happy than others. Some are naturally optimistic, cheerful, easy-going, while others are more serious, rigid, predisposed to depression or anger. The grads saw these as unchangeable, and hence genetic.

Yikes! A bit too fatalistic. Perhaps we do not come into this world with our personality traits cast in stone. Perhaps we learn them as a response to whatever happens to us in life. But that does not mean they are unchangeable. The grads had assigned a whopping 40% share of happiness to Relationships, but I wonder if they had stopped to dig a little deeper? Don’t all relationships (not just romantic ones) teach us much about ourselves and our character traits? Relationships shed a light on our unconscious habits, traits, feelings and bias.  In that dance to make relationships work, we are compelled to examine and change, to adapt, to learn new skills and traits. We mature because of our spouses, we grow to appreciate diversity because of our colleagues and neighbours.

Our minds, if we give them attention, can be rewired and reprogrammed. The grads themselves admitted that the human brain is highly elastic. So why would the disposition to happiness be an exception to this?

Rather, isn’t happiness the default setting of the human mind? Whenever an emotion or situation takes us away from this default we describe ourselves as being “upset”, “disturbed.” When we are angry, we are “unbalanced”. Fear makes us “unhinged.” Insults make us “out-of sorts.” Just as health is the default of the body, happiness is the default of the mind.

If that is true, then surely happiness lies somewhere below the surface turbulence of the mind. Rather than trying to quell the disturbances, shouldn’t we be searching the still, calm depths of awareness? Isn’t  that where we might discover happiness?

Do Others Have A Right To Dislike You?

Yoko Ono’s humiliation as art

Eileen collapsed at home from a massive heart attack. She was lucky that her neighbor heard the thud and cared enough to summon the superintendent. Eileen is a fearless woman, she has had to be since her husband died some twenty years ago. When you are eighty-six, living alone is not for sissies.

She glowed while recalling the kindness of the nurses during her two months of hospital stay. All except for HER, that evil one with the round spectacles and cold, mean face.

I wondered which nurse she meant: most of them are very compassionate. Then in walked Nurse Ratched. She was after blood and she yanked Eileen’s fragile arm. Poor Eileen winced as the nurse stabbed her vein as though with a dagger. She was unmoved by Eileen’s pleas of pain and kept up her patrician facade.

When the nurse left Eileen began to list all the slights and meanness this nurse had inflicted upon her. Her litany consisted of the standard behavior of an abrupt, uncaring human being. “I don’t understand what I did to make her dislike me?” said Eileen. This question had so disturbed her that she submitted a formal complaint against the nurse.

It turns out this particular nurse was notorious for her mood swings. She has a complicated domestic life and when she begins her shifts the other staff take bets on which way the wind is blowing that day. Rationally I knew that the nurse was not singling Eileen out. Her dislike for people was more general than that. But I also understood why Eileen took it so personally.

When I got home I had a long think about the times people have taken a dislike to me. Sometimes the dislike has been justified, over something I did or said. Fair enough. But other times the dislike is based on ethnicity, gender, age, or any number of factors over which I have no power to change. More often than not, it hasn’t been about me at all. The person was stressed, in a foul mood, or just had some bad news. I couldn’t help taking it personally. I too questioned what was it that I had done wrong.

Then I had a long think about the times I had done the same to others. If I can forgive myself for inflicting that on them, don’t these others also have a right to do so to me? Is it necessary that everyone, at all times, in all places, should like me?

It is highly irrational and yet, even the most socially and intellectually powerful people have difficulty accepting not being liked. I know liberal democrats who go on marches with placards about freedom of speech–except when a friend or acquaintance does not like them. Then it’s, “He shouldn’t say that about me.” They sign hundreds of petitions advocating freedom of expression, but privately : “She has no right to treat me that way.”

The other day I was walking on a side street near my home, lugging a bag of groceries. Most times I walk slowly because of my damaged heart, my strides are sometimes laboured. A man bicycled past me, stared and laughed at the heaviness of my pace: “You’re a pussy,” he exclaimed. No doubt in his world that is what I am. At first it disturbed me that he felt at liberty to insult me, a stranger who had done him no wrong. Then I quickly recognized his right to his snap judgements and erroneous opinions. He is a flawed and ignorant human being–just like me.

I now find it interesting to observe whenever that sensation arises in me of why doesn’t he/she like me? This is when the ego exposes itself in all its rawness. The ego normally hides in plain sight, lurking behind our joys and distractions. In rare moments when it shows itself I get a chance to examine it, to question it. I have long admired an art piece of Yoko Ono where she invites the audience to cut slices into her dress while she sits silently on stage. I wonder what she thinks and feels? Does she also witness her raw ego?

It takes some effort at first, but I find it very liberating to accept others’ right to dislike me. It makes going about my business that much easier and so much more pleasant. While wanting be always liked is a human trait, it is a terrible burden to carry. I don’t mean being disliked in a threatening kind of way. That is something against which I take a stand. But the casual unfriendliness of acquaintances, the gossipy dislike of friends or colleagues. I recognize that insults and dislike can escalate into violence, however most times they do not. I am now comfortable with that type of not being liked.

Those of you who take the time to ‘like’ my posts and perhaps even ‘follow’ my blog, I want you  to know it means a great deal to me. If however, you think what I write is piffle, I accept your right to your opinion.

Can Compassion Ever Be Joyful?

A group mind.

Undoubtedly, all of us have been moved by compassion at one time or another: a little girl walking silently with a bruised eye, an old lady collapsing in front you. An aching rises from deep within and it compels our hands to aide. Overwhelmed by sadness for another, we forget ourselves. We scarcely notice that the wall between ‘me’ and the ‘other’ is gone. His pain is my pain. Moving beyond the dictionary definition, I wonder if compassion can bring about a sharing of emotions other than sympathy and pity? Perhaps even, joy?

I now know that it can.

There I was in the small-town campus of an esteemed university. The fresh batch of MBAs, already suited and heeled for the graduation ceremony, were showing off to their families the rooms where they had garnered their expensive education. Mostly South Asian immigrant families much like mine. Mothers in saris with proud, glinting eyes. Paunchy fathers with worn-down limbs,  no doubt, from years of loving sacrifice. I have seen these types of looks many times before. Their glowing smiles proclaim: my son the doctor, my daughter the Harvard Ph.D. And yet, amidst all this obvious joy, I was struck by a profound grief.

While I understood their emotions, I was an outsiders to them. Something prevented me from fully empathizing. I had no experience of parents supportive enough to cough up 100 grand in tuition. I do not know what it is to be encouraged at home to succeed. In high school I had been academically gifted. All of my teachers unanimously  agreed that I had great potential for worldly success. But it never happened. The grief I was feeling was for that high school teen still trapped inside of me. The emotion was that of self-pity–an impotent and indulgent emotion, at once isolating and debilitating.

As I sat in the convocation hall, listening to the well-prepared speeches, I thought to myself: Is there a way in which this uncomfortable feeling of self-pity can be channelled into something positive? Is there a way to so wholly empathize with their joy? To use this group sense of accomplishment to extinguish my long-denied desire?

It turns out there is. And it wasn’t even difficult.

Luckily, in my volunteer work I am used to putting myself in others’ shoes. During the practice of empathy, there is wonderful self-forgetting that happens. It brings about a call to action without the pettiness of the ego. So why not empathize consciously, I thought? Why not deliberately burst the bubble between ‘me’ and ‘them’? I summoned every fiber of my awareness to this very idea. A surge of joy immediately filled me. My hands moved, as though by compassion, not to aide, but compelled to applaud wholeheartedly the accomplishments of these strangers. For a moment, all of their joy was also my joy. That teenager inside me had his wish fulfilled. (And it didn’t cost me a 100 grand either.)

When you think about it, this is not a very difficult skill to master. In fact we all do it without realizing it. Sports fan routinely break that bubble with the players and share their rapture. Skilled actors on the stage or on screen are able to make us feel what they feel. The other day on the subway I saw a sleazy, old man leering at a teenage couple in the throes of passion. He was visibly aroused and I realized that he was using the mechanics of compassion as, well, literally, co-passion.

I bet we all remember where we were during 9-11. On that day we North Americans were as though one mind. While we are not strangers to this bursting of the ‘me’ bubble and sharing the feeling of those around us, it happens to us because of forces beyond our control. We depend on others to make it happen.

What if we were able to unite with the minds of others at will? At even the most mundane of events? Might we then be able to override other useless emotion? Blow them apart forever? Emotions such as jealousy, boredom, disgust, loathing and contempt. Self-centered emotions which serve no purpose but they drain our energy all the same. Emotions such as self-pity  seem attractive because they make us feel special, but really all they do is isolate us.

To be always connected and never lonely, no matter where, no matter when–now that  really is special.

Is It Vanity To Pursue Perfection?

Does he deserve this much?

I thought I saw George Clooney last week in the Emergency Room at my local hospital. There he was, in his scrubs, with a stethoscope around his neck, all six-feet of him, towering above the rest of the staff. This doctor was so unspeakably handsome that for a moment I thought I was on the set of the old T.V. show, E.R.

From his speech and manner it was obvious this doctor was well born. With all that going for him, did he further need the status of ‘doctor’? In a moment of envy, I questioned whether this young man deserved so very much in life?

For that matter, do any of us ever deserve what we get in life? ”Why me?” we ask whenever something tragic happens. The unspoken other half of that is, “Why not to someone else?” (Perhaps to that young, good-looking doctor).

Because the reality is,  bad things do happen to good people. Compassionate people sometimes get cheated. Kindergarten children are massacred for no reason. Good guys do finish last. And people do get away with murder. Crime does pay (why else would so many people indulge in it?).

It feels like no one ever gets his just desserts. All of which is unsettling because we have an irrefutable sense that we are good and thus deserve all the good things in life, but none of its negativity.

If however, one has lived life for a number of years, one comes to realize how utterly selfish and utterly irrational that notion is. If we are lucky, we have matured enough to admit our imperfections. We are gracious enough to accept that others are also good and deserving.

However, it takes a huge leap to accept that life is just not fair. Cosmically, all life is random chance. People are not perfect. I have always liked how the weavers of Oriental carpets deliberately leave an imperfection in its design because, “Only Allah is perfect.” Then am I wrong to pursue perfection? Am I simply being vain? Perhaps it is envy of people like that young doctor that compels me to always better myself?

I have decided it is neither.  See, the problem with the George Clooney types and the Princess Diana types is that their perfection seems unearned. There were born perfect. They won the genetic lottery in terms of physical beauty, as well as social status. Were I to sit here and do nothing but resent them, that would be envy. It is also envy that makes judgements about whether they deserve what they have or not. Oh, it would be easy to emulate them in superficial ways–copy the hairstyle, his clothes sense, and speech. Those types of pursuits would be an act of vanity.

But to strive to be the best you that you can possibly be, to my mind, falls into another league altogether. One where there is striving to learn from whatever life throws at you. Where there is that drive that pushes you to pick up newer and fresher coping skills. To me that type of pursuit of perfection  is about  survival.

This was really brought home this week at the homeless shelter. Some of the men there are destitute because they are just out of prison. They usually request severe haircuts in the barber’s chair: Mohawks, bald heads– one man even wanted his eyebrows shaved off. He fussed and preened over his Mohawk, making me adjust it four times. I first thought it was vanity, but then I realized looking menacing is a survival necessity for them. They live the law of the jungle at every moment. So perhaps the quest for perfection is hard wired into us by evolution, and not about vanity or envy.

Out of the jungle we compete for grades, we compete for jobs, for spouses.  We are compelled to be faster, stronger, smarter, prettier just to keep connected.

I have been lucky enough to meet, every once in a while, patients as inspiring as Mr. Lewis. He is in his eighties and this is his fourth long-term hospitalization within the past two years. The nurses fight to have him in their care. Why? He is never not cheerful. He is by no means passive or fatalistic, he simply chooses to accept his misfortune with a positive, undefeated attitude.

Mr. Lewis is more perfect in my mind than that handsome, young doctor. He reminds me somewhat of that great poem by that Indian born Englishman,  Rudyard Kipling, If.-

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too….

….Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a man, my son!

His poem, echoes word for word the passages from the Bhagwad Geeta on the “Man of Perfection.”  (Chapter II) (Except for the bit about you’ll be a man, my son.)

It seems reasonable to me that if life is inherently unfair, random, and a mixture of positivity and negatively, the only choice we have left to us is what we do with what is thrown our way. To strive for perfection, for me, is to evolve and learn from my particular circumstance. The way I see it, the misfortunes of life are your pre-payment for wisdom. If you forfeit your right to wisdom, you have squandered your misery.

If my near-death has taught me anything it is that perfection of character is the only pursuit without envy or vanity. It is purely about survival. It is the only type of perfection that can never be snatched away from you.

Difference Between Peace And Quiet

Is birdsong peaceful?

The dog barked incessantly for over three hours. A whimpering, agonizing bark. I could not contain myself any longer. As soon as I stepped out into the hallway to investigate, the grumpy woman next door held her front door ajar to do the same. In the apartment across the hall from us, a dog was locked inside, alone. It was barking for help. As an animal lover it was the distress of the dog which upset me. For my neighbour it was the loudness of the noise which made her grumpy (she is a nurse who works nightshifts). A third neighbour soon joined us. He is a Condo board member and he was angered by the violation of the pets bylaw.

It was fascinating that the same sound had elicited such very different, but strong emotions from each of us. It occurred to me that perhaps sound is the most potent of all the senses. While sight is essential to navigate our movements through space, it is sounds which delivers our emotions, passions, and moods. I recall reading a sardonic definition of pop music somewhere: “That which is too foolish to be spoken is sung.”  So I wonder, does our relationship with sounds destine our relationship with the world? Does are ability to cope with noise determine our peace of mind?

The other day I decided to escape the noise of my neighborhood’s construction by visiting my local park. Seated on a park bench, I was enjoying the pleasant sound of birds. A jogger ran past, her iPad plugged into her ear, insulating herself from the park’s natural sounds. Opposite, a pair of lovers sat canoodling on the grass. Their intimate whispers effectively shutting out all other persons. It occurred to me that all three of us, the jogger, the lovers, and myself, were attempting to find some peace by isolating ourselves from our environment. Each of us was using sound to distract from what is here and now. We each craved peace, and we were all doomed to fail miserably.

As soon as the jogger removes her iPad, the world will flood back in. As soon as the lovers part company, the waiting cares and emotions will resume. As soon I return home, that pneumatic drill will be there to disturb me. The peace of selective sounds is highly fragile.

It seems to me that pleasant sounds merely alleviate some of the symptoms of inner restlessness, but they do not cure the root cause. Much in the same way as balms and aspirins help symptoms of physical maladies without treating the original cause.

So then we go looking for peace through perfect silence. The phrase peace and quiet  is so commonplace that we have assumed they belong as a pair. Of course religion also confuses peace with quiet. In every house of worship the world over music and silence are used to simulate peace.

But let us look at this logic. If quiet equals peace, the absolute silence should bring about absolute peace. I wonder what those criminals locked up in solitary confinement would say about that logic? And if absolute peace really results from silence then most of us are screwed. There is nowhere on Earth where there is absolute silence. And so we pursue relative silence: the lull of the ocean waves, the cooing of dolphins, the whistling of a breeze through tree leaves. It is the closest we can imagine peace of mind, but we never quite reach it.

Then where should we be looking? What exactly is peace? Maybe peace is there all of the time. Perhaps peace is what we experience when we are meaningfully connected to the world. Restlessness is when we are isolated from the world.

I like to think peace is related to sound in the same way that a white canvas is related to a painting. Peace is that blankness upon which the colours of daily sounds, and the emotions which they shape, reveal themselves.  Peace is there before the first sound of the day is heard. Peace is there  after the last sound before sleep. Most importantly, peace is there passing through each and every sound of the day. Peace is there while that pneumatic drill is going. Peace is there while that stranger is insulting you. Peace is  there while your friend is complimenting you. In other words, peace that passes all understanding. (Yes, Virginia, this Eastern idea is universal).

To be aware that peace is the background for all sounds, is to be freed from the burden of noise. To understand this relationship intellectually is a start, but when this insight comes from your own observation you begin to have a choice about the emotions contained within sounds. You then have a choice about how, and if, you will respond to an insulting tone of voice. You have a choice about what you say, as well as what you hear. You have a choice whether or not to be disturbed by construction noises or Rap music. And that is the beginning of freedom.

Now that really is peaceful.

The Unreal Value Of Money

Lloyd is a poet who lives in shelters, yet he refuses to accept government assistance or pity. He pays his $10-per-night fee at the shelter by selling poetry chapbooks on the streets. The poetry is his own and  the man knows how to write. He should: he has a B.A. in English Literature and he was mentored by Irving Layton, one of Canada’s most brilliant poets. When asked why he refuses government welfare, he jokes it is his bourgeois upbringing.

Being a product of the middle-class myself I understood what he meant. For those born rich,  money is as mundane as tap water. Those without also do not get worked up about where the next meal is coming from, or how they will make rent. For them it is just how life has always been. It is those of us in the middle who bear the extraordinary burden of money. It so dominates our lives that we do not even notice its power, except perhaps in a crisis.

This is tax season (or as I call it, Accountant’s Christmas) and people like us stress to gather all of the receipts and we jump through hoops navigating the tax forms which seem to get more convoluted by the year.

I took some time from worrying about the consequences of not filling in Box#68 to ponder the bigger picture. Given that money is imaginary, it struck me as ludicrous that to be so fussed about it. Money has reality and value only because we humans decided it has. Our pets do not stress about it. All of us are born without personal wealth, and we certainly leave this world without it. But in-between, o boy!, does it ever matter.

It determines how we are treated. It dictates whom we attract as friends and spouses. It decides how much power and influence we sway in nearly every area of life(including in court). It unleashes powerful passions of greed, envy, hubris and domination. Yet money is as imaginary as those borders between nations when viewed from space. But try to opt out of the system of money and you find yourself booted from the human race. As has happened to Lloyd.

Actually, Lloyd reminds me somewhat of Hindu sadhus or hermits. They are individuals for whom the desire to transcend the passions of the mind is so intense that they abandon their homes, their families and their wealth. By eschewing money, they seek to gain true freedom. They subsist on the currency of kindness. In return for food they trade spiritual counsel, and solace to the grieved. Perhaps the most famous sadhu of all time is the Buddha, who succeeded spectacularly in supplanting goodness as a global currency.

Which brings me back to Box#68 of my tax return. Is there a way in which I can borrow that  attitude of those sadhus but still  participate in this monetary merry-go-round of taxes and mortgages and insurance?

It is a tough experiment but necessary for the good of my well-being. I seem to have a high tolerance for emotional and physical pain, but financial woes really leave me anxious and exhausted. So now I am questioning whether I have given the concept of money more value in than it deserves? Perhaps if I too replaced the dollar for goodness as my currency of choice, at least within my consciousness, I may get less worked-up about it.

I would like to believe that the universe operates on a quid pro quo system, i.e. it pays back exactly what you pay out. If you move about like a total A-hole, well guess what bud, it is how you will be paid back. If karma exists for the bad, then surely the converse has to hold true? If you do good to others, goodness is paid back to you?

I was reminded of this just this week at the homeless shelter. A smart-looking young man in a business suit requested a hair trim. I thought to myself: who does he think he is? I donate this service to the homeless, not to jerks in business suits. Luckily I held my tongue. As I trimmed his hair he began speaking. He had recently returned from the Congo where he was doing humanitarian volunteer work for the past year. After two-hundred resumes being submitted, he had finally landed a job. His suit was $15 from a charity shop. He wanted to make a good impression on his first day on the job, but with two dollars left to his name, he did not imagine he would ever find a barber to trim his hair. He happened to drop by at the shelter to thank someone when he spotted me and the sign for free haircuts. Co-incidence? Or is it the grand barter of the universe? Was this young man owed goodness because he had paid out enough of it into the world?

I believe the latter. It occurred to me that this young man just confirmed for me what I had been thinking. He paid me for his haircut with this confirmation. Quid pro quo. Each time I struggle with the latest tax bureaucracy, I will think of him. I will tell myself these are only numbers. In the grand scheme of things, they have no meaning. Help will come from unexpected places when needed. Meanwhile, just keep putting out goodness into the world regardless.

Is Nurturing Undervalued?

The Hugging saint.

He was burly and robust. His cheek had a fresh cut across it, suggesting he had recently been in a fist fight. He pointed to his overgrown mane of blond hair with both hands and smiled broadly. I have to admit I was nervous about him sitting in my barbering chair. You don’t want to mess up on a guy like him. But as soon as my comb began stroking his hair, he visibly relaxed. He spoke to me gently and carefully, in his deep baritone. While I was cutting his hair, it was almost as though he were a little boy again.

I experience this time and again with men who live in shelters. Marginalized and isolated, often in and out of prison, they rarely experience nurturing. I can’t help wonder, if no one nurtures you, would you become anti-social? I believe that is my role at the shelter. Not cutting hair, but nurturing. Sometimes they do not want to leave the chair after the haircut. They go on talking, these solitary, street-smart men.

I sometimes see them on the sidewalk, curled up in a sleeping bag in a fetal position. Mothering is so nourishing that the toughest of men regress to infants in their sleep.

Is perhaps the desire for sex really about seeking our nurturing? Is that why people risk themselves in the bars, or online? In its rawest form, sex is about touching, holding, pampering. Might those gay men who cruise darkened, public toilets and park shrubbery be looking for a kind of anonymous nurturing?

It is a curious contradiction that people with a great capacity for nurturing are highly desirable. Even more so than physical beauty. I mean, Mother Theresa was no Miss World but she attracted admirers aplenty.

Later that week my sister was speaking to me about her sons. She is the epitome of a nurturing mother to her boys, and at times has been a substitute mother for me. “Everyone wants to be taken cared of,” she moaned. “But who is there to take care of me?”

Good question. Who nurtures the nurturers?

Is it something you can do for yourself? Or is it like currency, you have so much of it to give, and then you run out? After all, so many relationships break down because one party does all the giving, and the other makes no effort to replenish the nurturing of the giver.

I used to think it is a skill you can acquire through practice. The more you nurture the greater your capacity for nurturing. Then I came across certain nurses at the hospital, who after thirty years of service, do not bother to hide their contempt for patients. I wonder if they are that way because no one at home emotionally nourishes them. It seems to me the ability to nurture is a skill, but it requires something extra from the outside. A fuel. A fuel that has a source external to me.

Oh, there are spiritual types who will insist that you need no one else to replenish nurturing. They claim the source of it is divine. Saints are said to have an inexhaustible ability to nurture because they have tapped into the well itself. But I wonder if that is true? Every saint, every guru seems to move about with a retinue Mariah Carey might envy. O how the retinue pamper, feed, and flatter them. Is that how they really recharge themselves?

I have been fortunate to have observed more than a one such saint up close. I particularly think of a female Hindu saint known as Amma, or The Mother. Her capacity to nurture is indisputable. She hugs each and every person who attends her gatherings. Men, women, young, old, rich, poor, she stays till the last person has been hugged. In a crowd of 20,000 or more , that might not be until the early hours of the following morning. She sits in the same spot, without food or water or bathroom breaks, sincerely hugging each and every one. She speaks not a word of English, yet foreigners flock to be hugged by her. Like beggars at a feast they wait in line, their faces light up in rapture when their turn finally arrives. What is her source of nourishment?

Perhaps the answer is a combination all of the above. Perhaps nurturing is a nourishment so essential we take it wherever we can find it.  When deprived of it completely, we wither and turn anti-social.  A rare few are able to go past the human mind right to the very well of it. In deep meditative states, when my mind has stopped, I see glimpses of this source and it enriches not only me, but I believe, those around me.

That is just one way I replenish myself. These days it is rare that someone nurtures me. More routinely, whenever I perform a service for strangers, I seem to walk away feeling refreshed and recharged. The act of being selfless transcends the rut of the mind and there again is that glimpse of the source. In this sense my relationship with the homeless is symbiotic: I nurture the guys with free haircuts, and they in turn nurture me in another, deeper way.

Whatever it is, I reckon it is a force vastly undervalued. Peace and joy to all those in the UK observing Mother’s Day, both to those who are, and to those who have had mothers.

Difference Between Love And Compassion

Love or compassion?

Yesterday, during my rounds on the geriatrics ward, I chatted with a woman who was being visited by her son. Throughout our conversation, she continually referred to him as her husband. She has dementia, she gets confused. I asked her if she had been told when might the hospital discharge her. Her son replied that it would not be until a suitable nursing home was found. “They asked me if I would take care of her, but I can’t,” he explained, even though I had made no judgement. “I have never had children, you see, nor a wife. I wouldn’t know how to take care of her,” he shrugged.

I sympathized with his dilemma. I am certain he loves his mother because he visits her daily. But might he be lacking in compassion that he cannot adapt himself to taking care of his mother? It got me thinking about the difference between love and compassion. Commonly confused, I know I have often mistook one for the other in my life.

Love is personal, it’s messy. Love is taking a swim in the emotion sludge of the beloved. When the beloved is happy, we are happy. When the beloved feels guilty, betrayed, or grieved, we feel likewise. Parents/spouses/offspring/friends–all these relationships exist because of interdependence. They fulfill our needs and we theirs. Thus love arises from a sense of self.

Where compassion is selfless. It is impersonal because it can exist without any relationship at all. I do it weekly at the homeless shelter. It would be disingenuous to  say I love them when they are strangers to me and I to them. Yet I have unreserved compassion for them. The liberating thing about it being impersonal is that it comes without emotional baggage. Compassion does not demand anything in return. That is why I can still feel compassion even when they are unappreciative or even abusive. I would help my worst enemy if his life were endangered. Compassion is unconditional.

Whereas love brings with it expectations of the beloved. We reward or punish behavior, sometimes deliberately, sometimes tacitly. We punish the beloved for traits which we do not approve of. During my youth people used to speak of unconditional love. Back then we accepted it as a universal truth. Now, as I get older, I wonder if it is merely a utopian idea? I mean, if parents had unconditional love, why are some offspring more favored than others? If mothers have unconditional love their sons, then why did some mothers abandon their sons in droves in the early days of the AIDS epidemic? If a husband loves his wife in sickness and in health/ for richer, for poorer, then why do half of all marriages end in divorce? Love is by nature so conditional that I wonder if we really only love the relationship, rather than the person?

Though love and compassion are distinct, I see no reason why the two cannot coexist within the same relationship. This fusion, it seems to me, is the nearest thing there is to unconditional love.

But how does one go about blending love with compassion in relationships? I have spent the entire past week hunched over a sewing machine attempting to do just that. After spending a day mastering the straight stitch, I felt comfortable enough to tailor a kimono for myself. It was made from cut up old shirts and it now proudly sits among our dish rags. However, it and its descendants did set me on course to learn much about sizing, cutting and other tricks of the sewing trade. Tricks that will one day be of benefit to others as well as myself. I have decided to keep adding new skills to my character resume.

Why? Because compassion is a kind of generosity. And, like money, you need to have plenty of it before you can give generously. Practical skills are one way by which you can introduce compassion into your relationships. Practical skills such as carpentry, cooking, and sewing, allow  poor folk  like us to squander compassion as though Bill Gates. Practical skills afford a son the capacity to take care of his senile mother.

The latest research in neuroscience has discovered that learning new skills changes the very structure of the brain. New brain cells grow, the brain enlarges incrementally. People who learn new skills throughout their lives build up cognitive reserve, so much so that if old age dementia does set in, others don’t even notice it. In other words, continually learning new skills would have made that mother so capable that when her senility did arrive, she would have no need of her son to take care of her.