A client who had invented a very clever way to keep track of NASCAR driver standings (we applied for and obtained a patent for it) explained to me that getting kids involved with NASCAR would solve the problems of the world. The drivers, he advised me, were the ultimate role models. Keeping track of the standings would help kids with “math” (he meant “arithmetic”), keep kids out of trouble with the law, and so on.
Another client confided in me that getting kids interested in restoring old cars was the key to world peace.
A close friend, a bibliophile, thinks books should be the center of one’s life. Another good buddy is a sports nut and feels sorry for people who fail to appreciate athletic competition. Another friend is gun-obsessed and lies awake at night, fearful that the President of the U.S. is going to take his guns from him.
When people tell me what I should be doing (Ron, you’ve got to start restoring junkers! It’s the greatest thing!), I tell them that my hobby is Zen and of course they always ask: What’s that? I don’t tell them that Zen is my main interest, I just tell them it leaves me no spare time to follow NASCAR, to live in bookstores, buying books every day, to watch sports telecasts that go on for hours and hours with scores of mind-dulling ads repeated over and over, and so on.
Then I tell them a little about Zen and I always suggest they try it for mental cultivation. After all, they didn’t mind telling me what I should be doing. I tell them how to count their exhalations and ask them to visit howtopracticezen.com for more detailed instructions.
None of them has ever shown even the slightest interest in following my advice. They remain obsessed with NASCAR, bookstores, the (long-obsolete) second amendment, and so forth.
Just as others feel sorry for me for not sharing their interests, I feel sorry for them that they have chosen to toss their lives away in the pursuit of frivolous activities, activities that lead nowhere. A way of life that leads to increasing wholesomeness has no drawbacks. The paths I have been urged to follow do not lead to increasing wholesomeness. So I know I have chosen correctly.
When sitting in meditation, feeling the boundaries of my body disappear, watching the mind enter into “unworldly bliss” (the Buddha’s words), I wish my friends would stop throwing their lives away, ignorant of their inherent Buddha nature.
With just some effort and persistence we can discover many levels of consciousness more subtle than our daily consciousness, the one that is attracted to NASCAR, gun shows, movies, sports, and those other activities that bear no fruit other than momentary relief from boredom.
So ask yourself if you have made a good choice. I used to think the best choice was to be completely free, to have no particular obsessions, to be free of religious and political belief systems, to have no fetters. When I met the Buddhadharma, I realized that the freedom I admired was a prison, trapping me at the human level.
Dogs are happy to be dogs just as people are happy to be people. Neither life-form knows any better. I resolved to practice daily, just to see if there really was a world most humans didn’t know about. The Buddha said to take nothing on blind faith. So I practiced with no expectations and discovered that the teachings of the Buddha had more to offer than the teachings of the gun crowd, the militarists/war-mongers, race car drivers, writers of mundane books, and all other time-wasting teachings. I know I have made a good choice, and I am free of being a sound asleep human dreaming that he or she is free.
Buddhism Is Not What You Think: Finding Freedom Beyond Beliefs
