Buddhism 101
By CAB
On Hope (Spring 2021)
…’At church I find peace
And fellowship,
And harmony in the music.
And I am comforted by the knowledge
That if I fall—
Others will come to my side,
And help me find the faith
To rise again.’
(Poem ‘The Key to Freedom’ by C.A. Bryson, published in Visions, Spring 2001)
I wrote this poem a long time ago and I’m afraid that since then due to overwhelming adversity I’ve lost the faith that that poem speaks of. However, I do try to forgive, and to have hope. Indeed, that is what this blog post is about: hope.
When the authorities began rolling out their plan for vaccination from COVID-19, the seeds of hope were finally sewn. To me, it felt like seeing a faint glimmer of hope after living in an endless dark tunnel for a very long time. It is Spring now, yesterday was the first day of Spring, when I wrote this. Although a cloudy day, I knew for sure that the sunlight will very soon follow. Gradually, the days get longer and we emerge from the winter darkness subsumed with light. But also light in our hearts, in our minds. In our souls.
As someone once wrote: ‘Hope springs eternal in the human breast.’ And wasn’t it Cicero who wrote: ‘Where there is life, there is hope.’ There is life now: the daffodils, the cherry blossoms, the buzzing of honey bees is sure to come. For me, there is the warmth in my heart knowing that my octogenarian father has been finally vaccinated against COVID. Yes!! Finally, my loved one is out of danger.
In a moment of peace, I sip my tea. But any time is a good time for tea. Even after a crisis, as Bernard-Paul Heroux once said: ‘There is no trouble so great or so grave that cannot be much diminished by a nice cup of tea.’
I am not, I confess, a born gardener. But I very much appreciate other people’s gardens. Tending to one’s emotions, I’ve found, is not entirely much different than tending to bothersome weeds. Famous French philosopher Voltaire wrote: ‘Cultivate your garden.’ He meant the garden of our thoughts, the garden of our emotions. Buddhist teacher Dzogchen Ponlop had this to say about our emotions:
‘the goal of a good warrior is to conquer—not kill—the enemy forces, and to bring happiness and joy to all sides…Destruction is not the goal. The goal is to transform every kind of suffering into happiness for every kind of being that’s capable of feeling and thought.’ According to Ponlop, then, as we are speaking of weeds, I am correct to say that there is no need for toxic pesticides. Our goal is to ‘transform’ those weeds into compost, not destroy them for all time.
(p. 186 ‘Emotional Rescue’ (2016) by Dzogchen Ponlop)
When the dark days of COVID descended on us, did you manage to find hope within? Sometimes finding hope can be a lot like looking at the sky on a cloudy day (like today, for example). I look up, and I see forbidding-looking clouds. Rain is forecasted. Darn. Better bring in the garden chair cushions…But wait! What is there beyond the clouds? What is there when you fly to Honolulu and the plane at high altitude finally emerges of from the clouds into a great blue sky. So, there is hope. It is simply the question of waiting. Of being patient.
And those pesky irritating weeds? Where are they? Why of course, they are in the compost. The compost becomes rich in nutrients, thanks to those weeds, and coffee grounds…So we process our emotions, even the difficult ones, (especially the difficult ones), and we grow richer for it. Wiser. Perhaps, a little more grateful. Let us nurture our ‘soil’, the better to enliven and enrich our emotional ‘gardens.’
CAB
2021
North Van Caregivers 