Berkeley Buddhist Priory
1358 Marin Avenue, Albany, CA 94706
(510) 528-1876
Rev. Kinrei Bassis, Prior

Musing on Buddhist Comfort

Amanda Snedaker

The other day one of the lay ministers gave me some very good teaching. He kindly offered to teach me how to precent, to which I replied, "Ack! Let me get comfortable with offering incense first." Then he said, "You need to get comfortable being a Buddhist." I asked him what he meant, and he replied, "Oh, just getting used to what needs to be done at the different ceremonies." This simple comment is turning out to have many layers of meaning for me.

There are indeed many things I need to get used to, like the idea that our hearts are immaculate. Surely it doesn't mean my heart! I've always thought of myself as the exception to the rule. I have these horrible, unspeakable feelings. I've done these awful, hurtful things. I should have known better, should have done better, I should be better, and if I'm not careful everyone will find out what I'm really like!

But, in fact, it does mean me -- a totally revolutionary idea, if there ever was one, so much s o that my world is turned upside down. I find myself having no idea how to think about myself because my b asic assumption has been knocked out from under me. Instead of saying, "I am unkind, I am arrogant, I am selfish," now I try to say, "I've been arrogant, I've been unkind, I've been selfish." It feels odd, uncomfortable, and strange: I don't know, really, whom I'm talking about -- and maybe I shouldn't. Because it's not just me whose heart is pure, it's everyone. We're all the same, all human, all making the same mistakes, feeling the same feelings in response to those mistakes, trying to see things clearly and do better the next time.

Which brings to mind another concept that's a challenge for me: Everything and everyone is the Buddha. Recently a man in a wheelchair asked me for help as I was walking down Solano Avenue. I had just started to talk to him when a door opened, and my hairdresser stepped out and asked me to come inside for a moment. She told me that the man had spent most of the afternoon in her shop. He wanted this, he wanted that, he wanted the young girls to help him go to the bathroom, he wanted cigarettes, money, he was difficult and angry and wouldn't leave or pay for services. She never lost her temper, and finally she told him, "Well, I don't know how to help you, but I'll call the Albany police. Maybe they'll know what to do." Of course he left at once. But the tone of her voice had impressed me. She was so kind, so gentle, and she got this man to leave peacefully and under his own power. She'd respected his dignity and kept her own, while protecting her clients and her employees. And she'd noticed me out in front of her shop and tried to spare me a potentially difficult situation. She saw the Buddha in him, and she acted accordingly -- without anger, without fear, without doing any disservice to her own Buddha Nature.

This story leads me to another idea, that the path is the way, that this very moment is enlightenment. This moment -- no matter what is happening, no matter what I'm feeling, no matter what the atmospheric conditions are -- is it. There's no waiting, and no escaping. I can see -- no, I can live -- this incident of the man in the wheelchair, using his disability to exploit others and vent his anger and hurt. I can blame him and dislike him, or I can see in it what my hairdresser saw: a Buddha, struggling with his karma. I can react with anger and fear, or I can react with kindness and compassion. To react as she did, I have to see the Buddha there, or at least act as if the Buddha is there. This a pretty frightening place for me to be, a place where my proud, inadequate, defensive self is cut away. If even I am immaculate, so is he, and I have no grounds for opinions against him.

This idea of personal responsibility -- the law of karma -- that what I put out comes back to me, beyond worlds and beyond lifetimes, both resonates and perturbs me. On the one hand, I am all too ready to be responsible; nearly everything that goes wrong is my fault, and I am endlessly sorry for it. I wear guilt like a comfortable old sweater; it is just the white noise of my mind. On the other hand, I did the things I'm sorry for because of someone else, and I go round and round in the "He said, she said" cycle, looking for the pinhole that will let me out of my guilt and allow me to blame someone else. Facing a wall, I can see that both ideas are wrong: What goes around comes around, and this is as it should be. The law of karma is the tool that can pry open the lock of non-acceptance: Non-acceptance of self, non-acceptance of others, non-acceptance of what is really happening in the world and in my life.

What really takes some getting used to is that all these ideas -- immaculacy, enlightenment, faith -- are so much bigger than what our minds can grasp or articulate at any given moment. There is so much that we can't know, so many things on the list of things to simply be accepted, without judgment and without the intellectual understanding that characterizes our idea of knowledge. "Why did she do that?" "How could he think that?" "Why would anyone act that way?" "How could this happen to me?" It's all so much noise disturbing my clarity of mind, increasing my suffering, distracting me from what is really important.

Fortunately, the wall doesn't go anywhere. Bit by bit I'm adjusting to the idea that I can sit down at any time and start trying to accept and let go. Sometimes, I remember to do it. Eventually, I may even succeed! Ever so slowly, I'm getting comfortable being a Buddhist.