I am sitting in class.
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It’s my second week of a course in Buddhism.
I don’t know much about Buddhism, and this class is more of an intellectual exercise than anything else.
The little I’ve read about it, I like.
It makes sense to me — as a philosophy. And those little Zen gardens, I mean … c’mon. Who can resist?
So I’m sitting in class listening to our wonderful instructor, Tom, talk about the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.
He tells us, right from the start, that we will be experiencing Buddhism from the outside and the inside. The outside is the intellectual or academic substance of it. Who was Buddha? What did he teach? The inside is the meditation component, which Tom says we’ll get into in a couple of weeks.
Anyway, the first Noble Truth is Dukkha, which roughly translates into sorrow or discontent.
Our lives are Dukkha, says Tom. Full of dissatisfaction and stress.
“We wake up in the morning, tired from a bad night’s sleep,” Tom says. “We take a shower and realize we’re out of soap. There’s traffic on the way to work. Our boss is in a bad mood. And on it goes.”
What lifts us out of this sorrowful state, says Tom, is meditation. Through it, we learn to let go and simply be. We learn the “real” reality.
I raise my hand after a bit.
“You’re saying that we all live in a state of Dukkha or sorrow, and that’s unavoidable, right?” I ask.
Tom nods.
His movements are slow and he is a very quiet person — perfect for teaching a class about Buddhism. Sometimes his response to a question is not really a response at all, but a meandering into five different directions. In any other setting, that might annoy me. Here, it seems to fit.
“But I’m wondering something,” I go on. “I’ve tried to construct my life these last few years so there is less discontent. For instance: Every morning, I set my alarm very early and walk to a park with my dog. There is definitely ‘chatter’ that tries to fill my head–”
“Good choice of word,” Tom says with a gentle smile. “Chatter.”
I nod and continue. “I have to work to push the chatter out of my head. I pull myself away from it, and focus instead on the honking of the geese, the smell of the air, the colors of the sky as the sun rises, the soft dampness of the grass, the balanced sensation of being in sync with my dog as we make our way through the park.”
I take a breath and keep going. “I am aware of all these things, and I feel content. And it’s a contentment that lasts all through the day.”
Tom looks at me expectantly.
“But I’m not meditating,” I conclude.
I look at him expectantly.
Tom leans toward me.
He smiles into my eyes for a long minute.
“You’re not calling it meditating,” he says.
I lean back in my chair.
Hmm.
I like that.
I really like that.
I’ve written a lot here about my early morning walks with my dog. I’ve always known that while I say they’re for her — as a way of using up some of her infinite energy and distracting her from being a “bad dog” — they’re very much for me, too.
But I never thought of them as a kind of meditation — yet as soon as Tom says that, I know he’s right.
I love new ways of thinking of things.
Tom’s given me that today.
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