Compassion

Every year I bring a few books with me to Thailand.  Last year I brought Joan Tollifson’s Bare Bones Meditation and ended up in a retreat with the author shortly after my return from Thailand.  This year I brought another book by the author Nothing to Grasp*.  As my mother would say, it is one of bonny’s way out there books.  I started the book last year after the retreat and I am now on page 79.  I am not sure if it is way out there or so much inside the core, but it is about radical nonduality.

This year, I decided to have two Christmas Dinners with a fast day in the middle.  One of the things I have dropped is “clean your plate”.  That got me to obese.  I am at least down to “overweight” but moving in the right direction.  So, while I ate Pern’s half chicken, I had my companion book on the table and read a paragraph or two between servings, so I could “chew” while I chewed.

“I have been stuck or struck by her comment “Thought imagines a God “out there” and a self “in here” at the controls, calling the shots.  If you look closely, you discover that no independent entity can be found either “out there” or “in here” who is running the show of freely choosing what to want, what to think, what to care about, and what to do.”  

This leads me to think about why I like this person and not that, why I choose a more radical view of life than my very conservative and Republican parents and upbringing. My mother worried that I would end up on the street since I gave everything away.  She had 40 pairs of shoes when I cleaned her house.  I have three.  Where did I pick up comfort over appearance in a family when appearance was everything?  “Never let them see you sweat perspire” “be pleasant no argumentative” how did that upbringing make me go in such an opposite direction.   I would risk a friendship/personality for a principle. 

The most important thing that I have culled from all my mental gymnastics over a few pages in this book is to be more compassionate with myself.  I can not deny when I make a miss-step or say something harsh or do something too quickly that it offends or causes damage.   I must take responsibility for the action or words and apologize, make things right, or take a new direction.  

However, I can treat myself and others with compassion when I fail or feel they have failed to meet my expectations or ideal.   The great lesion I have learned this political go around is if there is no self and other… am I DJ or Trump that rhymes with grump.  My quest is to have compassion not just selective compassion for those/or me that deserve it.

 PS  and of course I had dessert - mince pie with brandy sauce - coffee with Kalua

* The other books “Being White” – Harris/Schaupp and “It’s Never too Late to Begin Again” Cameron/Lively as well as “Why Buddhism is True” Wright – on Audible