Living in Time

[Michael Gray]

Image by Zane from Pixabay:  https://pixabay.com/photos/bloom-blooming-blossom-blossoming-1090937/

We may have noticed that we only experience what is already past, since it takes time for sensations and perceptions to be recognized, identified and assigned their places in our inner map of the world. When it comes to the larger cosmos, there’s an even larger discrepancy between our view of distant galaxies, whose light has taken billions of years to get here, and whatever their current state may be–if they even still exist at all.

Neither of those discrepancies concern us. There may be gaps between the external world and our experience of it, but we know how to adjust our expectations accordingly.

In daily life, we are more concerned with our personal experiences than with the distant events that produce them. The distances traversed and the time taken for light or sound to traverse them are of little concern to us. We accept that events occur outside the realm in which we live, but are typically only interested if they impact us directly. Although, with global images deluging us every day, it can feel that none of us are completely safe from the death and suffering we human beings inflict on one another.

Isn’t it interesting how some events concern us and others don’t—based on whether we feel their impact or not?

There is probably a voice whispering in the back of our minds that we shouldn’t limit our concern to only what washes up on our private shorelines. We know that those in power are counting on us to ignore anything that doesn’t seem to threaten our own security. But the day may arrive when we will hear the chainsaw cutting through our own front door.

A friend, who also reads Daily Quotes from the writings of Tarthang Tulku, wondered about a post that arrived yesterday morning:

“We all know pain and suffering, but we do not know the cause. Until that cause is ascertained and then relinquished, no end to suffering can occur. An important step takes place when we begin to understand that causes of suffering are connected with the operation of the mind. Instead of blaming external conditions, we look into our patterns of behavior of body, speech, and mind.”

He recalled that a central Buddhist teaching relates suffering to how we crave some parts of experience, avoid others, and live in dull indifference to everything else. So, he wondered, knowing that ignorance is the cause, do we not also “know the cause” of our suffering?

Perhaps we can know something in our heads, but not know it in our bodies, hearts and minds.

There is a Buddhist teaching that compares wisdom and compassion to the two wings of a bird. Just as a bird cannot fly with only one wing, neither wisdom nor compassion on its own can heal the suffering that afflicts our lives. Wisdom may allow us to glimpse how ignorance, attachment and aversion causes us to suffer, but that won’t set us free.

That’s where compassion comes in. When we feel the suffering of living beings everywhere, we know that this suffering is real. We may ‘know’ that we are caught up in a web of delusion—caused by the fact that we treat everything as desirable, repulsive, or irrelevant—but it is compassion that lets us feel the weight of suffering. Only when we feel that weight in our own heart, will we wish that we could lessen it.

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