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In Rad Dad: dispatches from the frontiers of fatherhood Ian MacKaye says in an interview to trust my kid. Iain is two, and already I don’t trust him. I don’t trust him to not scratch the DVDs (just the other night he was pushing the Scrat Pack bonus disc from Ice Age: Dawn of Dinosaurs along the floor like it was a “choo choo chain”). I also don’t trust that he won’t try to stuff two discs into the DVD player. In his toddler state I simply do not trust him to not break or lose things in general.
This reaction seems founded enough: I tell myself I am just helping him explore his world in safety. I say that I can’t afford to buy Toy Story 3 for the third and fourth times. I have a lot of explanations, actually. They’re all bullshit.
Ian also said “with a child is born a parent.” It’s not only Iain who is exploring a new world, taking lessons from his experiences now into his life in the future: I am learning, too. Like him, I am conditioning myself, I am developing patterns. So what will my muscle-memory have me do when my eight-year-old son explores his surroundings, that larger environment which will be available to him on a bike and with friends? What knee-jerk reaction will hurt my relationship with him and his chances to develop when I “protect” him in his 16th year?
In my previous post I talked about how ahimsa does not let us worry because it’s an act of negatively judging our loved ones’ abilities to handle life. What I am talking about now is an extension of that into parenting, though it is a tricky thing to consider. Am I thinking correctly in worrying that Iain will ruin his DVDs? Hell yeah I am! Left to his own devices, the kid will scratch and break every one: he simply does not yet understand the cause and effect concept of scratching dics = no more Buzz, “doggies”, or “di-osaurs”. But do I really have something real to worry about?
You know what happens when I worry? I freak out. When I don’t trust my son I am not his friend or his mentor: I am this crazed loon jabbering on about the cost of material crap, waving my arms and buffooning about as if some plastic circle I spent way too much on at Best Buy is actually worth presenting a message of anger or frustration to my son. It’s ridiculous. Yes the plastic circle cost me a couple bucks, but the kid remembers everything, and it’s not worth me creating so early in our relationship this idea that material crap is worth losing our wits over, and that daddy doesn’t trust Iain, and that it’s OK to fuss and yell and storm about when we are frustrated.
So here’s what I do when I find myself acting silly like this. I play some worst case scenarios. What’s the worst thing that might happen if Iain destroys all of his DVDs? Hell, I might stop letting the TV baby-sit him when I need a couple more minutes of sleep or am too worn out for another round of “giddyup daddy”. Wait, that is best-case scenario. Worst case is that I will go back to Best Buy and spend all of Iain’s college money on more mind-numbing crap. Oh, by the way, Netflix has pretty much everything he likes to watch: I can stream it straight to my TV whenever I want.
Oh, did I mention that I’m the one who has all of the DVDs stacked at toddler level? Who is it that truly can’t be trusted to make sure the DVDs don’t get scratched or jammed into the DVD player?
As an aside, this whole topic teaches me a lot about another of the Yamas: aparigraha or “non-possessiveness. I have a hard time not looking at myself and the way I attach myself to things as I’m trying to explain to Iain that not everything is his. Why should it not be? Why do I have to separate what is mine from what is his? And how am I building the idea of community and sharing when I am always reinforcing the idea of “mine” instead of “ours”? It’s time to pay attention to our lessons we are teaching beyond our words. How much do we share as adults that qualifies us to instruct our young ones what it means to share?
As I continue my personal journey into the depths of myself through better understanding of the various precepts of the Eastern traditions, I often get hit by truths which leave me short of breath. Most recently this happened while reading more about ahimsa in Deborah Adele’s book “The Yamas & Niyamas.”
This is the first time I’ve actually used the terms yama and niyama so I’ll explain briefly before getting to the quote. All of the Eastern traditions with roots to India have a code of behavior (or precepts) one must follow to attain enlightenment and reduce suffering, often expressed in terms of things we should and/or shouldn’t do. I pointed out a reference to the Zen precepts in Ahimsa: Peace is Not Non-Violence, but I’ve mostly been talking about ahimsa, which is actually part of the Vedic precepts found in the yamas and niyamas of the yogic tradition.
Whether Vedic, Buddhist, or Zen, the precepts always start with non-violence because that precept must be fully understood and applied before any of the other precepts can be appropriately understood and followed. So ahimsa is the first and fundamental precept of the yamas and niyamas, which are themselves the first two limbs of the 8-Fold Path of Astanga Yoga. The yamas are a set of five restraints – non-violence, non-lying, non-stealing, non-excess, and non-possessiveness, some of which we may discuss later – which result in freeing the compassion required to deepen our personal journeys and make possible the path into the niyamas: purity, contentment, self-discipline, self-study, and surrender.
Ahimsa (non-violence) is critical, though, for without it everything else comes undone. Think, for example, of the second yama of satya (non-lying or truthfulness): without a commitment to non-violence in action and thought, we might wield truthfulness as a weapon, causing suffering instead of preventing or relieving it. When we are committed to ahimsa, however, we learn how to use satya appropriately, telling truth where it needs be told in ways which reflect the compassion of the universe. That is why ahimsa is so critical, it pervades all else we do and we must often be very attentive to catch its subtle tones. Adele hit me with just such a subtle aspect of ahimsa with this quote from page 35:
Worry is [a] way violence gets masked as caring. Worry is a lack of faith in the other and cannot exist simultaneously with love. Either we have faith in the other person to do their best, or we don’t. Worry says I don’t trust you to do your life right. Worry comes from a place of arrogance that I know better what should be happening in your life. Worry says I don’t trust your journey, or your answers, or your timing. Worry is fear that hasn’t grown up yet; it is a misuse of our imagination. We both devalue and insult others when we worry about them.
I can hear your protests from here, but just think about it for a second and you will see what she means. First, I would edit her quote to be more appropriate by saying instead that worry cannot exist within a loving relationship. Now, think of a person you know who worries constantly about you. You probably are confident that person loves you, otherwise that worry would be a waste of everyone’s energy. Despite knowing they love you, you probably avoid contacting them in many situations because you don’t want to hear that person go on about how worried they are for you (that is, how you’ve done things wrong and will continue doing them wrong for the foreseeable future). When you are having a crisis you probably don’t go to them immediately because you don’t want to hear “I told you so.” Essentially, you cannot commit completely to a loving, trusting, sharing relationship with that person because you cannot abide their worrying.
So friends, as we embrace ahimsa let’s stop our worrying. That doesn’t mean we stop caring, or that we stop helping (where help is asked for, not forcing it as that is an action of a worried mind): it simply means that we learn to trust the ones we love, and that we recognize that their paths are not our own.
Om Shanti
It’s easy to lose faith in people.
When all our information comes from the news media we begin to think that the world is always burning with hatred and danger. When we focus on our expectations of people, particularly in relation to what we feel as our due, we always come out feeling wronged and short-changed.
But sometimes, when we are attentive and committed to staying present, we find that people are good.
On the 10th I went down to Smithville, TX – an area just southeast of Bastrop, TX where the majority of the Texas wildfires hit and where over 1500 homes were destroyed – and volunteered at the Bastrop Central Distribution Center managed by the Smithville Ministerial Alliance . Hundreds of other people were there helping out, some driving 2-3 hours to come out. Since then the number of people volunteering their time, material and fiscal resources, and energy has only increased.
That is not to say that they have all the support they need. More than 1500 families lost everything, and we all know federal aid will never replace that loss.
I’ve talked a lot about the yogic yama ahimsa, but an equally important precept (this one again from the Zen tradition) is the commitment to take only those things which are offered freely and to give freely of all that we can. The first part of that precept is held in the yogic yama of asteya (non-stealing), while the second half of it pushes us to follow the yogic yama of brahmacharya (non-excess) because when we give of all we can we never hold on to excess. The victims of the Bastrop fires were forcibly taught what the yama aparigraha (non-possessiveness) is all about, but those of us who were not so drastically affected have the ability to learn that wonderful lesson by choice.
Some people lost everything
Last weekend, while tooling around Austin with my friend Courtney, I picked up a children’s book from World Spirit Books called “Have You Filled a Bucket Today?” by Carol McCloud and illustrated by David Messing. This gem of a book talks all about how we each carry our individual buckets of happiness and love everywhere we go, and how we fill or deplete the buckets. The critical lesson of the book is that there is a reciprocal, positively correlated action with regard to our own buckets when we fill those of other people. That is, when we fill other people’s buckets ours is also filled, and when we deplete others’ ours is also depleted. I love this principle! So if I follow the Zen principle above, I do not only fill other people’s buckets: I also fill my own. It’s wonderful!
Notice I never said that we should be completely selfless, or that people in general are selfless. On the contrary, I suggest we become very selfish when it comes to our happiness. If we were to truly focus on becoming happy, we would engage in all sorts of acts of love and kindness which mutually fill the buckets of other people and ourselves. Thus, selfish behaviors, which are completely natural and normal, can be harnessed to create a better world, one where we don’t have to wait for tragic events to show again our “indomitable spirit.”
However, if you want to start practicing selfish, loving, kindness and immediately fill your bucket and those of hundreds of fire victims please feel free to go to my CrowdRise project for the Bastrop fire victims benefitting the American Red Cross Central Texas Chapter, one of the many organizations providing relief to the victims. You can also make donations to the Smithville Ministerial Alliance by following the instructions here .
But don’t stop there. Most of us know the old maxim to “be the change you want to see.” Let us all begin today.
