Unknown Buddhist

In the Gospel of Matthew, Christ described the kingdom of heaven like a mustard seed.  I am sure most know the analogy that a mustard seed, once planted, becomes a strong tree, to which others can gain nourishment from.  Likewise, in the same Gospel, Christ also described the Kingdom of Heaven is similar to yeast, meaning a little bit of yeast can leaven a lot of flour.  Both the mustard seed and the flour is our mind and thoughts. Inside, our mind has the ability to choose both negative and positive thoughts.  We can choose to rid ourselves of potential negative thoughts without regret.

Whether it is the Kingdom of heaven or the nirvana, all of us can touch Christ. We can touch the Buddha.  Each of us has the power to reach the deepest level of love at any given moment. When we realize everything around us was by the love of God,: you me, mother father, lover friend, tables and chairs, homes and cars, candy, ice cream, the sky, fresh air, birth and death, toil and joy. All things were created by this eternal force.

When we see love, the Christian can see and touch the Holy Spirit. For the Buddhist, can see the Buddha. When we see love and compassion, forgiveness and heart, then we are very close to the Buddha and Christ.  When you practice these, you practice His teaching.

In his book “The Wisdom of Forgiveness,” the Dalai Lama claims each of us are interdependent. Each of us shapes our thoughts, feelings and reaction to world events.  Sometimes it is the things help shape who we are. Life events, death of family members, lack of resources, etc., often shape who we are.

For instance, I lost the love of my life. Inherently, I am not a bad person. While some things I did were not proper, not all of me is bad. Yet, both my former love and to some extent, the Catholic Church feels I may not be reclaimable. Yet, take that vey same person, place them and place him in a loving environment where both loves could flourish and nurture, our experience and outcome would be very different.

In many cases, one cannot experience the greatest of love without the potential for pain. You generally cannot experience one without the other.  By understanding our interdependence, edges soften and physical boundaries blur when spiritual lucidity occur.

So in times of great struggle, remember your potential interdependence.  Great diversity may be your greatest strength.

Joseph Campbell once said, if one does not come know thy own deeper self, thy deeper self will come forth. My darkness arose many years ago, it lived, and often lived against my will. However, the real battle is in the “wills.” And the greatest enemy against my own will was my own habits.

It is amazing how a single act becomes habit. For the most part, when I was Christian, I often thought many of us had not the courage to follow God as we should have. Neither did we have the courage to leave bad habits behind. Instead, I like many others, turned our faces for a moment and told ourselves we’ll be sure to get back to the path. When we look again, some twenty years have passed and we wonder what in God’s name happened to us.

If there is hope, I will say that this dark night of the soul (my own dark night) which I walked is for my benefit. God would certainly not help me if He depreciated the power of my own thinking. If He saved me, then I would not understand the power of my own destructive nature. Also, but more importantly, I would never realize the power of my ability to heal. In order to avoid creating misery, I had understand the full power of my own creative thinking (whether good or bad) and how to apply the good and acknowledge, but dismiss the bad. By choosing love, I hope to reject fear.

From the Buddhist perspective, the mind is the creator of sickness and health. In fact, the mind is believed to be the creator of all of our problems. That is, the cause of disease is internal, not external. You are probably familiar with the concept of karma, which literally means action. All of our actions lay down imprints on our mind which have the potential to ripen at some time in the future. These actions can be positive, negative or neutral. These karmic seeds are never lost. The negative ones can ripen at any time in the form of problems or sickness; the positive ones in the form of happiness, health or success.

The basic root of my own problems is selfishness – what I call the inner enemy. Selfishness caused me to engage in negative actions, which placed negative imprints within me. These negative actions were of body, speech or mind, such as thoughts of jealousy, anger and greed.

Selfish thoughts also increased my pride. These feelings in turn result in an unhappy mind, a mind that is without peace. On the other hand, thoughts and actions directed to the well-being of others bring happiness and peace to the mind.

Tibetan Buddhism is to meditate on the teachings known as thought transformation. These methods allow one to see the problem or sickness as something positive rather than negative. A problem is only a problem if we label it a problem. If we look at a problem differently, we can see it as an opportunity to grow or to practice, and regard it as something positive. We can think that having this problem now ripens our previous karma, which does not then have to be experienced in the future.

The most powerful healing methods of all are those based on compassion, the wish to free other beings from their suffering. The compassionate mind – calm, peaceful, joyful and stress-free – is the ideal mental environment for healing. A mind of compassion stops our being totally wrapped up in our own suffering situations. By reaching out to others we become aware of not just my pain but the pain (that is, the pain of all beings).

As I sit at the Marriott Hotel at the Houston International Airport, I stumbled across some of the old email letters written to a friend. After reliving their words, I realized that over the last 68,688,000 seconds since I left saw her, I have traveled far. Yet through all the turmoil of my own mistakes and apologies for my failures, I now fully understand the consequences of my own actions. In short…I got it.

Prior to being fired several years ago, my position was simply performing a duty as requested. To others, I breached everything I wanted to be. I incorrectly considered it my job, just another intra-departmental fight. Data was needed and collected. And in the end I forever wasted the chance to walk, heal the wounds and console the potential of everything given.

I do believe most of my friends have seen my futility and figured much of my potential was wasted. At the end of the day, I believe nature allows special friends to come together at a point in life where each of us needed friendship and love the most. And through the years I have been gone, that friendship still touches me very deeply.

For some of us, having that special friend brings one to a deeper level of God’s love no other could. And through that friendship, our personal core identity conforms more and more to the God we honor.

Most friends see us better than we see ourselves. Still, I am quite surprised to discover the many conflicting perspectives within me. Personally, I have nothing left and am unworthy to request compassion. Yet, via the Buddha, I search for and receive the grace to conclude this in love.

As a Buddhist, I honor all. Yet to this day, I honor and think of her at great lengths. For all who lost such a friend, please remember them still, not with the ending, but in love, dignity and honor. You have a gift of astute conviction and penetrating power. This power is why you still walk in their heart each and every day.

My love for her lives and will always move forward with me. I hope each of you find the same.

Sometimes, the focus on what we have or don’t have is mentally exhausting. We all are in a much bigger and riskier battle. All the business goals, mission statements, positive thinking, bonus mileage and positional status mean nothing. I am horrified by the fact that many are in this “cold,” unfamiliar clearing of dark wood, facing a stubborn, unrelenting enemy – the life we call our own. In the middle of the night, in the solitude of darkness, we awake and see my life as we made it, complete with all its mistakes, pain and agony. I see the trunks of an unknown forest and it scares the hell out of me.

And it is here we battle, where no other man can enter and where we feel wholly alone. Thus, when all the cash is counted, the dollars, the cents, the credits, the debits of one’s life – it all means nothing. This battle is brutal and it’s our psyche that’s on the line. And of course I will over-simplify, while continually worries about retirement savings, nest egg, relationship conversation are equally true, I am simply am trying to wake up tomorrow without having lost my mind. For the first time in my life, as I write, I completely understand the battle.

As a Buddhist, if there is one thing I have learned, it’s that despite everything one achieves, life refuses to grant immunity from its difficulties. I am rest assured of my blessings, but I began this journey on the east coast and now find myself on the west coast. This is the place God called me to, there is no other place or time. I will never see success as “here.” I must admit that what I see on the road is my creation and I must grieve for all I have wasted. When the grieving process is done, only then can we possibility walk onward.

We enter these waters to be reborn. And truly, I have no idea what my psyche will be like after the walk, but I am reborn along the banks of life’s river. But nonetheless, we are continually reborn, if only we drink from the water.