PARTICLES to WAVES

We are what we eat, we know; but more, we are what we feed ourselves. This pertains to far more than food. Our surroundings are our fuel. Our family members, people we befriend, people we love, what we read, watch, listen to, where we live, where we travel, what we run into and what we plan, how we suffer and celebrate, what we choose to ignore, what and how we appreciate ‒ and, yes, what we eat ‒ all of it is how we feed ourselves. If we occasionally take a step away from it all to get a more reasonable view, that step can be calming, jarring, somber, frustrating, or rewarding, but it’s often helpful.

Feeding works both directions. Say I take a step back, and feel one of the above emotions. I’m not the only person or creature in my environment. How I feed myself also feeds others. And how others feed themselves feeds me. We are all inter-related. No one celebrates or grieves alone. No one suffers by herself or is angry by himself. Unless we are hermits, living alone for years with no human contact, our emotions and our choices affect each other.

I’m not standing on a soapbox, here. I’m kneeling in the dirt far beneath a soapbox. But it’s okay; I like dirt, and dirt feeds me ‒ of course, ultimately actually ‒ but also, I just appreciate it. Dirt is where things that are no longer growing collect and accumulate so that what’s growing now can thrive. Dirt is the past, present, and future. It’s messy, and it’s basic, and it’s complicated, and it makes magic real. Dirt is calming, jarring, somber, frustrating, rewarding, and it is helpful. Dirt, life, is still and in constant motion.

From this grounded vantage point, all the ways we feed ourselves seem almost other-worldly. All kinds of relationships, our apartments and condos and cabins and house boats and houses, our pets, how we make any of them home, our books, TV shows, movies, how we interact when we’re together or connecting in and around wires or wavelengths: all of it suddenly seems so complex and even futuristic.

Thinking this way is an exercise I’ve given myself today while reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, “No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering.” The premise is that without mud, which is suffering, a lotus, which is happiness, can’t grow. While the sensory experience of the mud may be unpleasant to some, that mud produces a flower that creates highly pleasurable sensations. The point is that we can cultivate happiness from suffering. More, that happiness can’t exist without suffering.

So if ‒ when ‒ one steps back and assesses one’s surroundings, one’s fuel, and finds any suffering, that pain doesn’t need to last. It is the ingredient needed to start making happiness. Not just individual but collective happiness:

If we take care of the suffering inside us, we have more clarity, energy, and strength to help address the suffering violence, poverty, and inequity of our loved ones as well as the suffering in our community and the world. If, however, we are preoccupied with the fear and despair in us, we can’t help remove the suffering of others. There is an art to suffering well. If we know how to take care of our suffering, we not only suffer much, much less, we also create more happiness around us and in the world.

That’s hard to do, especially in a tough spell. Keeping suffering brief and in control is rough stuff. But the following Buddhist teaching, called “The Arrow,” helps get through that quagmire:

It says if an arrow hits you, you will feel pain in that part of your body where the arrow hit; and then if a second arrow comes and strikes exactly at the same spot, the pain will not only be double, it will become at least ten times more intense.

The unwelcome things that sometimes happen in life… are analogous to the first arrow. They cause some pain. The second arrow, fired by our own selves, is our reaction, our storyline, and our anxiety. All these things magnify the suffering.

It seems to me, then, that we can each be aware of how we feed and receive, and how we construct and direct our arrows. Stopping to think and read today made me stop firing the second set of arrows. Once I took a step back, I found a book that helped me look at the ways I’ve fed myself recently, and for much longer. The book helped me achieve distance from a very complicated, basic, grounded place: where I live.

The reasons for needing to step away can’t possibly ever start and end with only one person. I’m part of multiple different surroundings. Therefore, I’m fed by those and I feed all those places, from the feathered past to the point of the future, which is happiness.

So, for now, one more thought: From the mud, a lotus is growing. I hope through it you enjoy the earthy, hard-fought, messy environment of wonder and peace. It’s from, and for, you.