Tags
Amitabha, Awareness, Buddha Nature, Children, Christmas, Christmas Presents, Conditioned Mind, Marriage of Heaven & Hell, Meditation, Rigpa, Union, William Blake, Youth
Christmas presents. In my opinion giving is better than receiving. Maybe it’s a sign of my age, but my fondest memories of Christmas as an adult are the faces of my kids opening that special gift that they pined for. That explosive facial expression, the glimmer in the eye, and the nonsense words of gratitude are the high points of the Christmas season.
For most young American kids, there is no greater longing than for Christmas morning to arrive. I remember my sister and I would shiver with anticipation, ready to get those presents open.
I wonder what has passed from then to now. It’s not a melancholy wondering, but a question that the season and age eventually asks of you.
Innocence
When it comes to Buddhism, I’ve struggled with how to engage children and youth. Its tenants can be dry and logical. The message of the Buddha speaks to a certain amount of experience that children are free of.
I empathize with the story of the Buddha’s father. Legend has it he went through great effort to shelter young Siddhartha from witnessing sickness, old age and death. Who’s to say there is any benefit in impressing upon children the frailty of life? Children, of all people, are alive in the moment.
Indeed, there is something to learn from the openness of children. The immediacy of their pleasure and their emotional authenticity reveals a certain purity lacking in adults.
The Gift of Time
If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is, infinite.
—William Blake – The Marriage of Heaven & Hell
Look at how we’ve changed from youth. There is an age when we begin to long for the way Christmas used to feel. Compared to our youth, the quality of our experience seems diminished.
Of course, aging affects our senses, but there is a greater barrier to authentic experience than weakening eye sight. It is our conditioned mind. The cost of experience is the weight of memory on the present moment.
The Gift of Life
There are two sides to understanding who we are. The Buddha hints that underlying our changing bodies and minds is something more real.
There are many allusions to this fundamental aspect of being; the infinite light of Amitabha, Buddha nature, Rigpa, etc. It is the unconditioned awareness that underlies our consciousness.
These two facets, in union, form what we are. When their connection is not distorted by our conditioning, peace, spontaneity, and happiness arise naturally. We return to an almost childlike state.
Balancing the Scales
The rich complexity of human experience is beautiful and awesome. It is the play of our memories, hopes, and circumstances. Our relationships, love, hate, the whole spectrum of emotions are rooted in experience.
Buddhism encourages us to step back from the cacophony to sit. But we have to understand the purpose of meditation. It is not to deny the experience of life. It is to recalibrate ourselves, to set the scales back to zero.
Day after day, we accumulate road dust, we collect things we like, push away things we don’t. As we adjust to make our lives manageable, the scales shift off of zero. We take on the added weight of responsibilities, and we shed pounds in damaged self esteem. Over a lifetime an image of a warrior appears with the scars and trophies of experience. We engender perseverance, or distrust. We’re friendly, or we’re quick to judge.
In meditation, we return to the natural union of pure awareness and experience. We are reacquainted with our true selves. From this center we can recognize the weight of the world for what it is and a balance is remembered and renewed.
Anticipation
When we approach the holidays, we usually do it from an unbalanced perspective. Be it from dread or from great anticipation, our next moments can only fail to live up to our expectations.
Buddhism doesn’t promise a better, brighter holiday season, but it encourages you to be there for the one you have. Understand the balance, the weight, and the anticipation. Notice the gifts along with the difficulties. Experience tells you that the good times make the hard times worth it. Don’t miss being there for the good times.
