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Accepting Things as They Are
Good evening and welcome—-thank you for joining us tonight. I am going to talk about accepting things as they are and I will start by saying a bit about what acceptance is and isn’t and then I will tell you a story about something that happened to me a few weeks ago that is related to this topic.
So, acceptance is not a passive activity—-oh well, there is nothing I can do. It means turning toward what is happening in your life and seeing it clearly for what it is, acknowledging it and feeling it with all your senses—-no denial, distraction, avoidance or resistance. This is how it is, it’s not some other way. It’s fine to try to make things better if that is possible. Cutting spending to resolve money problems, adding exercise or making dietary changes if there are health problems—-but from a place of clearly seeing how things are.
So, a few weeks ago I got a notification that the batteries in my air pod—-the device that helps me keep track of my car keys—-were low and needed to be replaced. I drove to Fred Meyer and bought new batteries then went home and looked up a video on changing the batteries. I went through the steps several times and couldn’t get the device to open. I drove to the Apple Store, thinking they would be have a tool to get the batteries out. The guy behind the counter couldn’t do it—-which made me feel a little better—-so he took it to the technician in the back room, who couldn’t open it either. They suggested I go to a watch repair shop which could have a tool that would work. I went back to Fred Meyer because they sell and repair watches. I found when I returned, that the watch repair counter was no longer there—-they closed it down. The woman I talked to knew of a battery shop nearby that might be able to help and gave me directions. By this time, I was getting pretty annoyed, and I had an internal dialogue going about how much extra time and effort it was taking for this simple errand etc. etc. In my reading for this talk this is called “spinning out.”
The battery shop was for “big” batteries—-cars, backup battery systems for houses things like that, so they could not help me, but the guy was knowledgeable and looked at the AirPods and determined that they were broken—-some springs that would allow the device to be opened were broken. He thought I would have to replace the AirPods. Much more expensive than replacing the batteries. I headed back to Fred Meyer to buy new AirPods stewing about all this. I was sitting in my car at a red light and I asked myself “what is happening right now?”
Nothing. I am just sitting in my car at a red light, waiting for it to change. At that moment, I realized how much extra upset I had added to this situation by my negative thinking. Yes, the errand was taking longer than I expected and yes, more expensive—-but everything else was extra, added by me and just made the situation more unpleasant. At least I was patient with the clerks I talked to and didn’t say anything I regretted.
When I came time to pick a topic for this talk, I thought it would be a good idea to spend some time reviewing Buddhist teachings on acceptance of things as they are. There is a lot of material on this and I will mention teachings from the time of the Buddha, 6th century China, from Eihei Dogen—-12th Century Japanese teacher considered the founder of Soto Zen, and also a number of contemporary teachers. So it’s a very common human problem that many of us have—-to dislike what is happening in our life, and this includes when good things happen in your life but they won’t last forever—-we don’t like it when good things end.
I will start this section by mentioning some of Norman Fischer’s thoughts on suffering. Norman is the founder of the EverydayZen Foundation, former Abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center and the founding teacher of Red Cedar Zen Community. Here is something he said: “The most astonishing fact of human life is that most of us think that it is possible to minimize and even eliminate suffering. We actually think this which is one reason why it is so difficult for us when we are suffering. We think “this shouldn’t be this way or I am going to get rid of this somehow…it’s incredible that we should think such a thing.”
Think of the endless variety of suffering any one of us could experience any time. Feeling angry, confused, depressed, or lonely or stressed. Having some physical pain like a headache or injury of some kind, the flu or a serious illness. Money problems, relationship problems, being stuck in traffic, wishing the weather was different. And then there are bigger problems like death of loved ones or the big problems in the world: war, injustice, poverty, global warming, natural disasters. Even if these big problems don’t directly affect us, I think they do weigh on us in some way. Suffering, big and small, is a very common experience for all of us.
As I said earlier, Buddhist teachings are full of material about accepting things as they are.
Let’s start with the 4 Noble Truths.
- Suffering exists in the world. Difficult things happen to all of us in the course of a lifetime.
2. Suffering is caused by resisting what you don’t want and clinging to what you do want.
3. There is a path to end suffering
That path is the Eightfold Noble Path: 1. Right view. 2. Right intention. 3. Right speech. 4. Right action. 5. Right livelihood. 6. Right effort. 7. Right mindfulness. 8. Right concentration.
Rather than talk about all eight steps, I am only going to talk about right view. This first step on the eightfold path encourages us to notice our suffering rather than trying to avoid it and look inside ourselves to see what might be contributing to it—our words and actions, our beliefs about self and other, how life should be, etc. With the example I gave you earlier, my own thinking was the biggest contributor to my unpleasant experience. It would only have made it worse to blame the manufacturer, or any of the people who tried to help. Once I changed my view of the situation, things got better. Here are some brief quotes about suffering and acceptance:
From Pema Chodren, 90 year old teacher in the Tibetan tradition: “The Buddhist teachings direct us to work with what is happening as the path of awakening rather than treating your life experience as some kind of deviation from what is supposed to be happening. The more difficulties you have, the greater opportunity you have to let them transform you.”
From Jetsunma Palmo, a teacher in her mid 80’s practicing in the Tibetan tradition since the 1960’s: "Call something an obstacle, it is an obstacle. Call it an opportunity and it is an opportunity. Nothing is extraneous to the spiritual path.”
Here is the first part of a poem from 6th Century Chinese Zen master Sung Jahn:
Attaining the way is not difficult
Just avoid picking and choosing.
If you have neither aversion nor desire
You’ll thoroughly understand
A hair’s breadth’s difference
Is the gap between heaven and earth.
From a podcast “Accepting life as it is: the Buddhist path to freedom: “We cannot be free while we are at war with reality. Every act of resistance binds us tighter to the thing we are resisting. The more we push against what is, the more we become defined by it.”
Joko Beck, founder of the San Diego Zen Center: “There is one thing in life you can always rely on: life being as it is.” Whether you or I like it or not, things are the way they are.
From Suzuki Roshi, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center: “Accept what is as it is and help it to become its best.”
The teaching I found most useful was from Eihei Dogen, Japanese priest who lived from 1200 to 1253 who is considered the founder of SotoZen: In a collection of his writings called the Shobogenzo, or Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, he wrote a fascile (#44) entitled Flowers in the Sky: he writes that: “The time and place that the blue lotus flowers open and spread are in the midst of fire and the time of fire.” When this was written in 1243, it was a time of political upheaval and uncertainty in Japan. A blue lotus blooming represents awakened activity—-responding with wisdom and compassion. And the fire represents difficult, challenging times. I found these words and the image of the blue lotus in fire really encouraging. When challenges come, instead of just falling back on our habitual way of reacting, use the circumstances to consciously make the best response you can come up with.
This is right in accord with one of the Buddha’s teachings that Desiree mentioned in her talk a couple of weeks ago—-the Five Rememberances:
- I am of the nature to grow old, there is no way to escape growing old.
2. I am of the nature to have ill health, there is no way to escape ill health.
3. I am of the nature to die, there is no way to escape death.
4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love is of the nature of change. There is no way to avoid being separated from them.
5. My deeds are my closest companions, I am the beneficiary of my deeds, my deeds are the ground upon which I stand.
We should reflect often on this.
I think what the Buddha and Dogen are saying here is the same thing: how you act—-what you say and do—-matters. Especially in difficult, challenging times and situations.
To summarize: 1. Turn toward whatever is happening to you. Don’t avoid, resist or cover over.
2. Don’t make it worse in all the ways we can do that.
3. Pay close attention to your internal reactions and habitual reactions and try something else.
4. Notice the results of your words and actions and adjust as needed.
I will finish this talk with one more story.
A couple of weeks ago, my wife (Carolyne) had to get a medical test and our health insurance insisted that we use their clinic in Seattle rather than getting the test in Bellingham. They gave her an appointment for 8:15am on a Monday morning. We decided to drive to Seattle on Sunday night and stay in a hotel to avoid the early morning traffic. We had breakfast at a restaurant and got to the clinic at 8:15 and Carolyne went up to the desk to check in. She gave her name and birthday and the receptionist looked at her screen and said “I’m sorry the technician who was going to do your test called in sick this morning. We don’t have any other appointments available.” After a brief “You’ve got to be kidding me!” we both shifted to “oh, well, I guess we will just drive home. Luckily the traffic wasn’t too bad and we got home by 10:30am. We did a much better job of handling this than the errand I told you about earlier—-in a way it was kind of funny to go to all that trouble—-the drive, the hotel, the meals, for nothing. Another thing I came across in my reading that I appreciate is one of the teachers I think Pema Chodren—-recommending that we “collaborate with our life.” So, we didn’t add anything that made things worse.
So, that is what I have to say about accepting things as they are. Thank you for listening
