A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough (6 page)

In the final weeks of writing this book, I called Mark Nepo, a magnificent poet, prolific author, and my close friend of many years. I was feeling stuck; I had about fifteen chapters left to write, but I wondered if I was losing focus and had begun to worry that I might not finish the manuscript on time.

He asked, “How many chapters?”

Fifteen, I replied.

“How do you know?” he responded. “When you envisioned this book, you had it outlined in your mind with a certain number of chapters, covering specific topics, right?”

Of course, I said; this is what we do.

“And now you feel trapped in the structure you built, afraid you will not be able to complete it, right?”

Yes, again.

“What if you have no idea how many chapters you really need, or any idea what more you have to write? I have been with you as you thought about and lived through this topic for years. If the structure of the book is stressing you out, get rid of it; write whatever your heart wants to say, and whenever you feel finished, just stop.”

Mark pointed out that he and I often had to navigate our way through this very specific, seductive trap: believing that we are supposed to know what will happen. Mark’s incisive, “How do you know how many chapters you need?” helped me realize I had fallen, once again, into this trap. I had become bound by the mind of the expert, the mind that decides it knows—based on experience, belief, training, success, failure—how things work, how they are supposed to turn out.

This state of mind—already convinced, closed to new information, rejecting any alternate possibility—runs contrary to what is most useful and essential. Once we become an expert, we grow increasingly convinced, from our vast knowledge and experience, that we just know how things ought to be done, how they will work, which way is the right way, and which is clearly the wrong way. We can predict with little difficulty the outcome of almost any situation. For the expert, there is little that we don’t already know, and so there is no curiosity for new information. In this the expert surely suffers, because we slowly, painfully, lose our capacity for wonder, surprise, revelation, or excitement in discovering new frontiers of experience.

But for the beginner, Suzuki Roshi reminds us, anything is possible. If we give an adult a small box of crayons and a coloring book, they will likely use them properly, coloring the sky blue, the sun yellow, the grass green—all while staying in the lines. But give a child the same box of crayons, and each crayon can suddenly become anything—a snake, a train, a snack, a wall-coloring device, a projectile, or a wax-tipped swab inserted into any orifice of the body. The possibilities for a child—whether given a crayon, a stick, a ball, a piece of string—are endlessly astonishing.

How often do we groan under the pressure of some guaranteed-to-work-best scenario, deadline, or project that, however well intentioned, no longer feels gently right, easy, balanced, or timely? How often do we try harder and work longer to finish something we initially hoped would be simple and easy, and bring happiness or relief, only to realize that—day by day, ignoring our own very real, honest experience—we just keep re-creating more suffering, inadequacy, and failure?

There are many kinds of experts. In this case, I was the one who presumed I knew how things would or would not work. But don’t we all claim to be experts in something, whether it be problem-solving, parenting, teaching, sports, or even Monopoly? Still, there is clearly one thing on which we all agree we are the expert: We know what we like and what we don’t like. On this, at least, we are absolutely certain we are our own best expert, the final authority on what makes us happy.

Many people from all parts of the country seek my company as a mentor, spiritual director, thinking partner, or guide for a personal retreat. While many call and talk with me by phone
from wherever they live, some decide to travel to Santa Fe to join me for a personal guided retreat.

A few months ago Melissa and John—a young couple, both professors of engineering at a large university in the Midwest—arrived for a few days’ rest and renewal. While Melissa had initiated the trip, John was eager to come along. Melissa had come for conversation and reflection; John was an avid biker, far more interested in the challenge and stimulation of spending his days on long rides up and around our New Mexico mountain ranges. On the day we met, John—his bicycle thoroughly equipped and fully suited up for an arduous climb to eleven thousand feet—left Melissa in my company and took off for the aspens.

On our last night, when I had dinner with Melissa and John, I asked about his mountain adventures. He described wonderful days of biking and climbing, of discovering new trees and animals along the way. But then he told a long story about how he had spent his entire afternoon watching the clouds, the summer thunderheads, gradually rise, form themselves into shapes, then grow and slowly reform, as they emerged from behind the Sangre de Cristo mountains. He had, he said, spent a full three hours, sitting still, simply watching how the summer clouds grew and changed.

Melissa was amazed; she was quick to point out that John was someone who never sat still, not for a moment, if he could help it. She had never seen him sit still for more than five minutes, let alone three hours. What could possibly have happened?

John had allowed himself to be surprised. I told him that whenever we say, “I am the kind of person who …,” we are
usually setting ourselves up for a surprise. John had been the kind of person who could not sit still; but sit still he did, following some invisible thread, captured by wonder and curiosity, willing to be taken, to be whisked away into some magical next right thing.

If I had told John before they came that I would require that he sit still for three hours and only watch clouds the whole time—without biking, moving, or even speaking—he may have decided it was not worth that kind of suffering to come to Santa Fe after all. But I had not asked him to do anything; instead, he had made the choice, not as an expert, but as a beginner, willing to be surprised, willing to indulge some long-forgotten, childlike awe.

Jesus said,
The wind blows where it will, and we hear the sound of it, but we do not know whence it comes or whither it goes. So it is
, he said,
with the life of the spirit
. In other words, in cases that involve really precious, important things like happiness, beauty, kindness, or love, we actually have no idea how to make things turn out the way we want. It is far better to be willing to be surprised by the wonder and grace of how it all unfolds, unaffected by either our permission or our preference. If we only see this as a failure, we will never experience the contentment of a benign and loving spirit in the world.

John learned he could no longer know what, in the future, would or would not make him happy. His curiosity had trumped his habitual presumption that he was an expert about what he liked, or about what would, on a Saturday afternoon, feel like enough.

Unless you become as a child
, said Jesus,
you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven
. He is describing a quality of mind natural
to a growing child, this curious beginner’s mind, where by retaining our capacity for wonder, surprise, and delight, we come closer to that state of grace where we are able to find God’s presence almost anywhere.

But if we let go of our corrosive, mistaken presumption that we are somehow responsible to supervise the work of God and instead allow ourselves to be humbly and easily used by God, we soon become more supple, able to bend gently, easily to forces much larger and wiser than ourselves, and taste each new surprise as an opportunity, a blessing, a delight. Then, the magnificently impossible kingdom of heaven is ours.

How We Simplify Our Choices

W
e naturally assume that freedom of choice makes us happy. The more choices we have, the happier we will be. If we feel free to choose whichever career, spouse, home, car, vacation, school, toys, or appliances we decide will bring the most pleasure, nourishment, or success to ourselves and our family, clearly we will be more satisfied and at peace with what we have.

We equate choice with freedom, but they are not the same. More variety does not make us happier. Research shows that the more choices we have, the less happy we are with the choices we make. The more we are able to get just about anything we want, the less satisfaction and happiness we feel. So the more our culture produces a tyranny of choice in every arena of human life, the number of people who describe themselves as “moderately” or “very” happy actually declines.

Freedom of choice, apparently, can be as painful as it is precious. We can feel suffocated, drowning in an endless sea of options. When we go to the grocery store, faced with choosing between a dozen kinds of strawberry jam, we succumb to what one friend calls “option paralysis.” Each and every possibility needs thorough deliberation, weighed against all other options, researched, agonized over, figured out, before we feel absolutely certain about our final choice. But when we make
that ultimate choice, we soon find ourselves plagued with guilt and uncertainty: With so much else we could have chosen, how can we ever be absolutely sure we picked the right thing?

In the end, we actually feel more sad and disappointed when we choose anything, because the regret we feel—have we passed up better possibilities promised by what we didn’t choose?—outweighs any enjoyment we receive from what we did choose. If every choice we make has the potential to make us feel worse, not better—more impoverished, not more enriched—then how will any decision we make help us feel we have enough of anything?

Many spiritual traditions invite practitioners to adopt certain precepts, or inner principles, by which they set the course of their life. These precepts are, in some measure, designed to help us simplify the confusing array of choices we will face throughout our lives. The Ten Commandments of the Hebrews, also used by Christians, the Buddha’s Eightfold Path, and the Five Pillars of Islam, each serve as such precepts.

If any Christian or Jew uses these commandments as a guide for his or her life choices, the list of possible responses to any situation is made smaller. For example, if the person is tempted to steal a large amount of money—regardless of how easy it may seem, or how clear it is he or she would never get caught—the temptation should be of little interest. It is likely to be simply ignored. There is no choice to struggle with, no decision to agonize or lose sleep over. The choice is made simple by the fact that there is, in fact, no choice. Unless you rearrange your entire spiritual belief system, there is simply nothing to choose.

Deciding what to say and how we say it is made less complex by those who follow the Sufi tradition. Their teachings
on this are fiercely unambiguous: whenever they speak, their words must first pass through three gates:

The first gate—Is it true?

The second gate—Is it necessary?

The third gate—Is it kind?

These clear, simple principles help discern what, when, and how to say what we would choose to share aloud. Words have tremendous power. They can be used to reveal or to conceal the truth, to hurt or to heal, to build up or to tear down. For a Sufi, these precepts, planted firmly in the heart, relieve all anguish and uncertainty about choosing whether or not to say something. Would our words pass these gates? If not, silence is the option of choice. No agony, no confusion.

Whether we follow a particular religious teaching or not, any choice we face will be made simpler by the clarity of our own inner constitution, our most deeply cherished beliefs and principles, the essential truths that guide us from within. How many of us can name those precepts by which we guide the choices and actions that support and nourish the person we believe ourselves to be? By what means do we set our inner compass? How do we know it is trustworthy, reliable, and accurate? By what measure do we engage in a life that is honorable, congruent?

How many of us can easily name three such precepts, as simple and clear as those used by the Sufis, so deeply planted in the soil of our soul that it would be impossible to choose anything else? If we do not know, or cannot name these precepts, where then can we begin?

While visiting the art gallery of a close friend here in Santa Fe, I sat down with pad and pen and scribbled this brief confession of an impulse that had overtaken me while standing before a gently sculpted Buddha:

BRONZE BUDDHA FOR SALE

I almost bought a Buddha
.

Green cast bronze
suggestive, abstract
lumping shape of earth
sat so long so
still
all elements over how many years time
fused as one
.

I thought it would look good in my house,
effuse some deeply missing spiritual
fragrance I missed or
suddenly knew I so desperately
needed
.

I wondered how much it would cost.
I looked at the price list,
no red dot,
can afford it,
I thought,
but,
but
.

Then
.

There
.

I stopped
.

Knowing at once
It was the quiet
I wanted
,

The stillness inside, the not moving
for so long
what had been inside this Buddha
had become one with
everything good and soft,
everything sharp and aching,
some impossible alchemy of time and
needing no thing
peace
had rendered all life
still
.