Buddhist Boot Camp

by Hawkeye, Timber

  Controlling Your Temper

  Practice listening to other people talk about their beliefs without interrupting them. Listen to Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, Mormons, Anarchists, Republicans, KKK members, Heterosexuals, Homosexuals, Meat Eaters, Vegans, Scientists, Scientologists, and so on . . .

  Develop the ability to listen to ANYTHING without losing your temper.

  The first principle here at Buddhist Boot Camp is that the opposite of what you know is also true. Accept that other people’s perspectives on reality are as valid as your own (even if they go against everything you believe in), and honor the fact that someone else’s truth is as real to them as yours is to you.

  Then (and this is where it gets even more difficult), bow to them and say, “Namaste,” which means the divinity within you not only acknowledges the divinity within others, but honors it as well.

  Compassion is the only thing that can break down political, dogmatic, ideological, and religious boundaries.

  May we all harmoniously live in peace.

  You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger. —The Buddha

  Insecurities

  While hanging out by a friend’s swimming pool, my mother passively said to me, “Looks like someone is getting chunky!”

  I was sixteen and far from obese by any measure, but I must have already been insecure about the few extra pounds I had gained, because I started seriously obsessing about my weight after that.

  Within a month I had her take me to a sporting goods store to buy an Ab Roller (the most popular body-sculpting contraption back in 1993). When she asked me, “Why do you want this?” I said, “Because I want to be a stripper one day!”

  She laughed, of course, assuming I was joking, but I felt like the only way I could officially overcome the “chunky issue” was if people paid me to take my clothes off.

  It turned out that my insecurity had nothing to do with my outward appearance after all, because even when I started stripping in a couple of years, with a killer six-pack and a fake tan, the pale fat kid still stared back at me when I looked in the mirror.

  I’m not blaming my mother for doing anything we don’t all do every single day. She may have said it to me only once, but I continued calling myself fat and unattractive for years thereafter every time I looked in the mirror.

  Your words have tremendous power—even the words you say to yourself—so please choose them wisely.

  Your past mistakes guide you, not define you. —Anonymous

  The Pain Behind Our Fears

  As her health and memory started to fade, my friend’s grandmother moved out of her home and into her daughter’s house for closer observation.

  We all thought it would be a wonderful idea for me to take care of the property (now that nobody was living in it), and perhaps even rent out a room or two, and have the money go toward Grandma’s expensive medicine and care.

  The house had fruit trees in the back yard, as did many houses in that neighborhood, and my plan was to collect the excess from the community and feed those in town who couldn’t feed themselves. With the abundance of food that would otherwise go to waste, nobody was to go hungry again.

  My friend and his wife had known me for many years and blindly trusted me to always work for the benefit of others. Strangely enough, however, when we approached his parents, aunts, and uncles with the proposal that I accept this unpaid caretaker position in good faith, and that I do everything I could to ease the family’s burden of worrying about the property, help with its upkeep and cleanup, and, of course, make sure everybody had a wonderful home to visit when they were in town, everyone thought it was a great idea except for my friend’s mom, who couldn’t see past her fears and lack of trust in other people (let alone a stranger).

  She was worried that I would intentionally burn down the house or something, and sue the family for all they had, or that I’d illegally sublet the rooms and pocket the rent, trash the place, or—and this she said with a great deal of sinister humor in her voice—if I really was as kind and generous as her son made me out to be, I would (God forbid) let homeless people sleep on the floor when it was cold outside.

  As it turns out, there was a lot of pain behind her fear. There always is. Any talk of someone living in her mother’s house just made the fact that her mother was dying a reality for her to have to accept, and she clearly wasn’t ready to do that.

  I flew back and forth to meet with everyone, and I even had an attorney draft an agreement that gave me no rights to any money or lawsuit under any provision whatsoever, with the intention to best protect the family’s interest and, most importantly, Grandma’s integrity, but her daughter still wouldn’t budge.

  This was very frustrating and sad to me at the time, and I did not understand why she wouldn’t accept someone’s generosity without thinking there was a “catch.”

  Has the majority of our population gotten this cynical, jaded and pessimistic and I haven’t noticed? Do people no longer believe in random acts of kindness and giving? If that’s the case, then we need to do more of it so that people believe again!

  Please don’t be discouraged by this story, but let it ignite the fire in your heart to give, forgive, and believe.

  A perfectly wonderful house is now a graveyard for cockroaches and geckos, falling apart because of mildew and neglect, which is what I imagine has happened to my friend’s mom’s heart as well.

  The important lesson I learned from this experience is that you can’t want something more for someone than they want for themselves, and that some people simply don’t believe in the light. (How could I have been so naive as to not know this before?) It doesn’t matter if you shine light in their faces, because if they don’t believe in it, they won’t see it.

  I realize now that it’s way more important to open our hearts than our eyes. If our hearts are closed, then it doesn’t matter what we’re looking at—we would never see everything as it truly is: Buddhaful.

  People don’t need a reason to help people. —Anonymous

  LIVING IN GRATITUDE

  Grateful for Each Breath

  The phrase “Take a deep breath” is misleading. The breath isn’t something we can just “take.”

  Breathing is a gift, a miracle, offered to us over and over again, yet much like our health, we often take it for granted right up until the moment we no longer have it. Let’s accept this gift with gratitude and appreciation as we would all presents, by saying, “Thank you.”

  Sometimes society can seem disgruntled and ungrateful, and the world may appear to no longer be appreciative, but some of its people still are, and therein lies the promise.

  So go ahead . . . accept a few deep breaths with your eyes closed and a smile on your face.

  What a joy it is to be alive!

  Being content makes poor men rich; discontentment makes rich men poor. —Benjamin Franklin

  Prevention Is the Best Cure

  I reached the end of my rope one day and finally said, “Enough is enough! I’ve had it with your lies, violence and manipulation, so get out! This relationship is OVER!”

  So even though we had grown up together and shared some good laughs over the years, it felt REALLY good to finally walk away from that abusive relationship. The newfound freedom gave me an opportunity to grow as an individual, do some soul-searching, read books, and spend a lot more time outdoors.

  The first few weeks apart were pretty difficult, I have to admit. I really missed the routine of coming home to that familiar embrace (because we humans are comforted by routine, even if it’s dysfunctional). But now that it’s been more than ten years since we last saw one another, I can honestly say that I don’t miss my TV at all.

  It’s true that not EVERYTHING on television is negative, bad, violent or filled with mind-numbing commercials, but I personally had to cut it out altogether in order to end the addiction. Did I miss out on some amazing footage, lessons and research shared on the Discovery Chan
nel, for example? Absolutely! But I certainly didn’t miss waking up to bad news or going to bed with even worse news, that’s for sure! I did my own research instead, at my own pace, on my own schedule, with no commercial interruption.

  The only change I initially noticed was that I couldn’t join the conversation with co-workers standing around the water cooler at the office anymore, but after a decade without TV I noticed a significantly more remarkable change: all of my thoughts were my own. I wasn’t being told what to think, what to buy, like, eat or watch; I was making my own decisions.

  I wonder if not being exposed to media is part of why I’m so happy all the time. I mean, I didn’t just cut out TV; I went all out and eliminated newspapers, radio, and magazines too!

  In a book called Meditation, Eknath Easwaran explains how we don’t just eat with our mouths; we eat with our eyes and ears too. So if we watch or listen to poisonous negativity, violence, gossip, and pretty much anything that is not conducive to our growth or maturity as adults, then it’s no different than eating only refined sugars, fried foods and saturated fats; we’re bound to get sick. That sickness, however, takes the form of fear, paranoia, anxiety, greed, insecurity, a lack of trust in our fellow brothers and sisters, and discontentment with life altogether. Yuck!

  Luckily for us, as is the case with most ailments, prevention is the best cure!

  Start paying attention to how much of what you watch is filling you with fear, anger or anxiety, versus how much of what you read or expose yourself to is about unconditional love, gratitude, trust, respect, and the divinity within all beings (including yourself ).

  As Carlos Castaneda said, “We can make ourselves miserable, or we can make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”

  So go ahead and choose to be happy by taking the first step of avoiding the very things that make you UNhappy. It certainly helped me!

  Flowers only bloom when they are ready. People are the same way. You cannot rush or force them open just because you think it’s time. Be patient. —Timber Hawkeye

  Versions of Violence

  When I first confronted my mother about being abusive, her response was, “Where? Show me a bruise!” It’s strange how she never hit us to the point of leaving a visible mark, but the scars ran deep, and the abuse wasn’t always physical. I was thirteen at the time, mind you, and couldn’t articulate how scared I was of my own parents.

  It wasn’t until I saw a poster at the supermarket that advertised a local help-line for abused children that I even knew it was illegal for parents to beat their kids.

  A couple of decades later, I heard the song “Versions of Violence” by Alanis Morissette, and it made me realize how I too was being violent as an adult without even knowing it.

  The song gave me an opportunity to self-reflect and grow, which I’m deeply grateful for. Unsolicited advice, coercing, controlling, labeling, judging, and meddling are just a few versions of violence that deeply affect us. “These versions of violence,” Morissette writes, “sometimes subtle, sometimes clear. And the ones that go unnoticed, still leave their mark once disappeared.”

  Everything in your life will improve as soon as your determination to move forward is stronger than your reluctance to let go of the past. —Timber Hawkeye

  You’re in Charge!

  When I was growing up I used to cry in my room and try to think of ways to either kill myself or the people I blamed for my misery to make it stop.

  I ended up doing what I later discovered is the Buddhist approach to alleviating suffering: I didn’t get rid of my mother, for example; I got rid of my emotional attachment to her. There is a cause for our suffering, and there is a way out.

  It turns out that I hated her because she never met my expectations of how I thought a mother “should” be. But as soon as I took away those expectations, I finally saw her as my greatest teacher, not enemy, and accepted the fact that she did the best she could.

  Although she didn’t model behavior that I wanted to mimic when I grew up, she perfectly demonstrated what I DIDN’T want to ever become, and that’s an equally important lesson.

  What I learned is that nobody is in charge of your happiness (or unhappiness) except YOU!

  When somebody loves you, they don’t have to say it. You can tell by the way they treat you. —Anonymous

  Why Gratitude Is So Important

  Once upon a time, on a cold winter morning, I rolled out of bed after not being able to sleep all night. The neighbors had been arguing and slamming doors, thunder and lightning kept waking me up, and I couldn’t get comfortable in any position. I got up cranky and frustrated, and my day was just beginning.

  The real kicker? Two months earlier a friend had suggested that I try meditating every morning! To tell you the truth, I absolutely hated it. I mean, for years I’d kept the same routine of coffee, news, breakfast, and going online to check my e-mail. Now, before doing anything else, I had to sit for a few minutes and focus on my breath? Most times I just ended up thinking about all the other things I’d rather be doing (or simply wishing I was still in bed).

  As you can imagine, sitting down to meditate was extremely difficult after a sleepless night, but a promise is a promise.

  I got out of bed, went to the little corner in my apartment that I had set up for meditation, and sat with my bitter thoughts about everything that had kept me up at night.

  Within two minutes of sitting down, however, something interesting happened: none of my complaints would stick. Instead of being upset about the storm outside, I felt blessed to be indoors. The neighbors’ arguing only made me feel grateful for the healthy relationship I was in, and when I really thought about it, there was no way I could complain about being uncomfortable in my bed while so many people were sleeping in cardboard boxes on the street every night!

  It was amazing how gratitude managed to stomp every negative feeling I had. My morning meditation turned out to be better than a cup of coffee, and I was positively enthusiastic about the day ahead. In fact, when I ran into my neighbors on the way out, I felt sorry and sad instead of angry, because I knew they’d actually had a rougher night than I had.

  Gratitude is an amazing antidote to almost any negative feeling. The minute we are angry with someone is the minute we have momentarily forgotten how grateful we are for having them in our lives in the first place. And as soon as we return to gratitude, the anger disappears. It’s amazing!

  Try it out sometime and you’ll find that smiling is inevitable.

  If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging! —Will Rogers

  A Simple Way to Be the Change

  We used to rely on the church to instill a sense of gratitude in our children, but as many people have strayed away from religion for one reason or another, it is now up to you and me to use whatever tools we’ve got to talk about everything we’re grateful for on a regular basis.

  By spreading gratitude on Facebook and Twitter, for example, we balance out the fears and anxieties that the media instills in society through every other channel and station.

  Let’s show the next generation how easy it is to find things to be grateful for. The alternative is a terrible and growing sense of entitlement, which is nothing short of an epidemic, if you ask me.

  Gratitude is at the core of every chapter’s intention to awaken, enlighten, enrich and inspire. I invite you to include gratitude at the foundation of your online posts, daily interactions with your friends and family, and even lunch conversations at work. Keep a gratitude journal or create a gratitude wall in your home where everyone can write things they’re grateful for on a regular basis.

  Next time someone complains about their job, for example, be the one to say, “I’m grateful that I have a job.” And if someone whines about not having enough of something, be the one to say how much you appreciate what little you’ve got. I’m not suggesting that you be obnoxious to the point of invalidating other people’s version of the truth, but you c
an simply and skillfully steer them in the direction of the silver lining because trust me, they want to see it too, they just can’t at that moment. Be patient without condoning their negativity. Skillful means.

  You get the point: don’t support this growing problem of people taking things for granted and feeling like victims; instead, celebrate the fact that we are far beyond survival and actually spoiled compared to so many others!

  Seeking happiness outside ourselves is like waiting for sunlight in a cave facing north. —Tibetan saying

  Thoughts, Words, and Actions

  If you’ve ever taken a puppy for a walk, you know that it runs after everything that sparks its curiosity. After we train it to obey some simple commands, however, it grows to be our obedient and intuitive best friend.

  The mind can be just as active and difficult to control as a puppy, yet we’ve never trained it to listen to us. Why haven’t we done this? Our mind chases random thoughts, jumps to conclusions, and has a hard time staying focused. We have so little control of it, in fact, that sometimes we can’t even turn it off at the end of the day. If it were a puppy, we would be very upset!

  We know that Buddhism is about training the mind, and that there are many methods of doing so. The second principle of Buddhist Boot Camp is that our thoughts become words, and our words become actions. To train the mind, however, Buddhist Boot Camp suggests working backward. Start by changing your actions, then be mindful of your speech, and your thoughts will eventually follow.

  First, recognize and eliminate your bad habits (whatever they may be). If you habitually act out of anger, for example, then there’s no fertile soil in your mind for the seed of gratitude to grow. To think positively, your actions must be in line with your intentions.

  Be part of the solution by not being part of the pollution, for it isn’t enough to simply study Buddhism; we must practice what we learn!