Tag Archives: Four Noble Truths

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an expression of self

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The way you support yourself can be an expression of your deepest self,
or it can be a source of suffering for you and others.

Thich Nhat Hanh on Right Livelihood – The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching

OK.  I’ve written and deleted this post three times because life has been intervening and offering new perspectives on the practice of earning a living.  It started with an early morning phone call from the nursing home where my mother has lived for four and a half years.  Vascular dementia has painfully eroded her capacity to discern between threat and safety resulting in raging violence when her caregivers try to give her a bath or cut her nails.

The phone call was a variation on that theme with a twist.  Mum was having severe chest pains that had begun the evening before.  When I showed up she was in full rant, most of it unintelligible because of her aphasia.  But occasionally a word or exclamation would bellow out unmistakable in its intent both to frighten us off and to summon help.  “You’re killing me!”  “Whore!”  “Dirty woman!”  You have to understand that my mother is 4′ 11″, 93 years old, and not much heavier than a load of groceries – with a right hook to shame a heavyweight boxer.

We needed to change “everything,” the care givers told me.  Clothing, bed covers, blankets, everything. I was the drone: hold her down here, turn her over and HOLD!  Now turn the other way, flip, pull, tuck the sheets in.  The two women patiently explained every step to my mother.  She watched them intently as they stroked her cheek and said: Julia, we’re going to…  Now we have to…. Julia, I need to…  Then, as they proceeded to do what had to be done, she screamed words at them I don’t think any mother should know.  In the melee, one care giver took it in the temple (right on her bar bell piercing – that must have hurt like hell!).  The other caught a glancing blow on her cheek.  I think I escaped but there’s a soreness on my upper arm that wasn’t there before.  Working swiftly the three of us managed to undress, wash, and dress her; then we managed to change the bedding and the blankets.

When it was over, Mum stroked the cheek of one of the care givers, allowed herself to be tucked in and, Frank having tentatively returned to the room, took his hand in what he said was a bone crushing grip.  Drifting in and out of sleep, she turned and asked me, “How is your Mummy, dear?”

I started this post quoting paragraphs about the indeterminacy of Right Livelihood, about earning a living in ways that may be damaging to others, about doing what must be done even if it violates the precepts.  There are many words and analyses dissecting Buddhist principles, ethics, and skillful living.  I deleted them all in the end because I don’t think they capture the practice of Right Livelihood as powerfully as two women did that morning, doing what was clearly distressing to them and doing just what needed to be done.  They seem to embody Thich Nhat Hanh’s term “supporting” oneself which offers more than just the idea of an exchange of services with an eye out for bad karma.

Thank you for practising,

Genju

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doing it right

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There’s a close link between thought and action.  Remember all the training techniques for athletes?  They involve self-talk, visualization, re-framing, and even suppression. Facebook pal Doug M. mentioned that the Buddha’s teachings emphasized “thoughts as a forerunner of actions.”  This tends to be the usual take on Right Action, practising at that boundary between thinking and manifesting the content of thought.  I want to write “embody” but the term encompasses so much more than the completion of the thought-action circuit and includes a flavour of skilfulness.  Either way, Right Action evokes not only a sense of engagement but implies familiarity with a deep ethic of that engagement.

Many of our friends and colleagues are involved in compassionate projects, engaging in the world in ways I can’t imagine myself doing.  Maia Duerr, author of the fabulous Jizo Chronicles, just returned from a trip to an elephant hospital in Thailand and writes passionately about it here.  The video is heartbreaking but I made myself watch it; I’m not good with this level of suffering – or I should say, I’m useless in the face of senseless suffering brought about by human stupidity.  My first reaction is rage which is totally ineffective.  So, I applaud Maia for facing this Ox and returning to the marketplace with the wisdom of her teachings.  Other friends like Iris whose dedicated work is with rescue dogs, Lisa Friedland who founded Awakened Connections and Nancy Lasseter who is Director of Rwanda Sustainable Families are facing down HIV/AIDS in Thailand and poverty in Africa, respectively.  And, of course, there is our daughter Alex (The Kid) who comes home to stay just long enough before this life of ease and comfort becomes inconceivable in the face of global suffering.  She’s off on another adventure which I can’t share yet in case I jinx it.

These are people with whom I am in direct contact, face-to-face, hand-to-hand, heart-to-heart.  And yet.  And yet…  There is a side to Right Action where one cannot get it “right” no matter what one does.  As an aside – and perhaps belatedly so – it was pointed out in a dharma talk that the Eightfold Path is a manual of Ethics. I haven’t been explicit about it in my written exploration but it certainly is bouncing around in my skull.  This double-edged aspect of manifesting Right Action is in the foreground of our lives at the moment.

Frank’s father died three years ago this week, leaving a broken down house and an even greater broken set of relationships in the wake of his departure.  The house, more easily managed than the floundering relationships, is in North Carolina which is a state in profound distress.  Unemployment is running about 9.7% and in the county where the house stands, it’s much higher.  Over the three years, we’ve rented the house about four times, each time to tenants who were likely unable to pay the rent but whose stories suggested compassion was required.  And, you know where this is going.  After four occasions of having to repair damage to a newly renovated house, chase down house keys from vanished occupants, and apologize to neighbours for collateral damage, we find ourselves faced with a tough decision about what constitutes right action.  There are no clear answers and, at the moment, we realize that the rental agent, a saint of a woman with a discerning nature, is the better judge of Right Action in this dilemma.

My Chaplaincy supervisor at the hospital pointed out this need for discernment to me when I asked if I could take on a former patient through the spiritual care department.  Positive support includes teaching people how to use the resources that are already available to them.  And it includes knowing when the they’ve received all they can use effectively.  It’s a tough call and I’m glad she asked me to make it.  Perhaps in the end, Right Action is generosity of spirit, the willingness to do what is difficult and to engage in it wholeheartedly – even if “doing” is saying it cannot be done.

Thank you for practising,

Genju