What the kids are teaching me about Buddhism
Central to Buddhist teachings are the Four Noble Truths. That second one there, about the origins of suffering, can be more understandably phrased like this: "the root of suffering can be defined as a craving or clinging to the wrong things" (thank you, BBC)
Attentive readers here will recall that I am eternally doing battle with all of the accumulated debris in my basement, the objects of my prolonged tendency to throw nothing away (a trait I shared with no less than Andy Warhol). I guess I always have felt like all of this ephemera would be invaluable to my biographers as they tried to assess what shaped the life of this great man.
How are the kids teaching me about Buddhism then, you ask? Periodically, we all go down to my 'lurkem' and they marvel at my boxes and boxes of 'treasures' (as in 'one man's trash is another's...'). Sometimes I pull something out and realize that it's nothing I'll find use in again (although I always have creative and grandiose schemes for all of these things - or I just feel like the memories that they evoke are too valuable to discard) and give it to the kids.
The objects that led my mini-satori this morning were the dozens of Hot Wheels® cars, once treasured sandbox possessions, that I bequeathed to my son. The memories attached to favorite cars, like the replica '68 Mustang, brought back afternoons of building dirt roads and playing 'cars' in the sunny afternoons with long-gone friends.
So it was sort of hard to pass them to certain destruction. I paused, then I handed them over.
This morning, playing with the boy, I realized that whatever me-specific memories were attached to the car had all been replaced by memories of my son playing with them.
And I realized that my clinging - at least to this one thing - has painlessly been removed.
Hopefully, the boy doesn't gain it, at least not with the cars. He'll have his own clinging to deal with - he doesn't need mine as well.
Central to Buddhist teachings are the Four Noble Truths. That second one there, about the origins of suffering, can be more understandably phrased like this: "the root of suffering can be defined as a craving or clinging to the wrong things" (thank you, BBC)
Attentive readers here will recall that I am eternally doing battle with all of the accumulated debris in my basement, the objects of my prolonged tendency to throw nothing away (a trait I shared with no less than Andy Warhol). I guess I always have felt like all of this ephemera would be invaluable to my biographers as they tried to assess what shaped the life of this great man.
How are the kids teaching me about Buddhism then, you ask? Periodically, we all go down to my 'lurkem' and they marvel at my boxes and boxes of 'treasures' (as in 'one man's trash is another's...'). Sometimes I pull something out and realize that it's nothing I'll find use in again (although I always have creative and grandiose schemes for all of these things - or I just feel like the memories that they evoke are too valuable to discard) and give it to the kids.
The objects that led my mini-satori this morning were the dozens of Hot Wheels® cars, once treasured sandbox possessions, that I bequeathed to my son. The memories attached to favorite cars, like the replica '68 Mustang, brought back afternoons of building dirt roads and playing 'cars' in the sunny afternoons with long-gone friends.
So it was sort of hard to pass them to certain destruction. I paused, then I handed them over.
This morning, playing with the boy, I realized that whatever me-specific memories were attached to the car had all been replaced by memories of my son playing with them.
And I realized that my clinging - at least to this one thing - has painlessly been removed.
Hopefully, the boy doesn't gain it, at least not with the cars. He'll have his own clinging to deal with - he doesn't need mine as well.
Beautiful.
In ten years
I will still cling
to all things
good and merciful.
and beautiful.