Category Archives: Compassion

Apr9

I Didn’t Seek It, But I’ll Take It

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About a year ago I began this blog as one way to actively think about the path I was walking. For over 40 years I had walked a spiritually fulfilling path as a Christian, until realizing a couple of years ago that, somewhere along the line, I had stopped being a Christian and had become a Buddhist. Now I was walking an even more spiritually fulfilling path, though one far less familiar to me.

A lot of questions presented themselves to me and it seemed at times like I was feeling my way around in the dark. So I started blogging as part of my attempt to seek answers. It also occurred to me that I was probably not the only person seeking to answer those same questions. There might be a few people out there who would benefit from reading what I’m thinking, and it would be great to connect with those people and walk the path together.

Not long afterwards, I decided to create a page on Facebook with the same name, Dharma Beginner, as an extension of the blog and, primarily, to publicize its availability. My intention had been to post notices when new material was available on the blog, and perhaps the occasional quotation or link to a relevant online article. What happened next was wholly unexpected.

As of today, the Dharma Beginner page has 18,592 likes. That’s roughly 18,500 more likes that I would have predicted. So, an error of just 20109 percent, or slightly better than the accuracy of my NCAA basketball bracket.

This was not what I bargained for. This page has taken on a life of its own. In fact, I have been blogging only about once a month on average, but I am posting just about every day on the Facebook page. The regular visitors to the page seem to enjoy my blog but are obviously returning for other reasons given the infrequency of my blogging.

The regular visitors formed a beautiful little community right under my nose and without me noticing at first. Our virtual sangha, as I like to call it, has the same cast of characters as any in-person community. There are the gurus, as I think of them, the really experienced and knowledgeable people who can always be counted on to offer the perfectly apt quotation or to answer a baffling question. Thank goodness someone at the page knows something, because it’s not me!

There are the wallflowers who keep coming back but lurk in the corners, soaking up the experience while they shyly remain silent except for the occasional peep. Keep coming guys and gals and don’t feel pressured to speak up if you don’t want to. Just be there, because I love knowing that the page feeds you.

There are the hurt, those whose past experiences with organized religion have left them scarred and hypersensitive. My heart breaks for them and my compassion kicks into overdrive. I hope that they find some solace when they visit the page and are helped to recognize that happiness is within their grasp.

There are the debaters, ready to pounce on a point and beat it to a bloody pulp. I don’t know what I’d do without them, because they remind me that mine is not the only point of view and, quite often, their knowledge and passion puts me back in my place.

What there are, more than anything, are myriad people grateful for what they find at the page—which is amazing to me because I feel grateful for their presence. I am enriched by their many different voices and their common search for peace and happiness. I can’t imagine what my life would be like without them.

And this brought me up short recently. It began to dawn on me that I had a responsibility to the visitors to the page. I had been continuing my very low-key, minimally-responsible approach, posting the occasional quotation or article. But what happens when I go away, or simply am too busy to post? It doesn’t go unnoticed. People get worried about me. More importantly, people come looking for inspiration, a good word or two, encouragement, and see nothing new. I have given them a reason to expect such things, and sometimes I don’t deliver. Maybe they go away disappointed and never come back. Gosh, I hope not.

It occurs to me that, even though I can’t see the members of this community, it is a community nonetheless. One that I created and, therefore, am responsible for and to. If taking the Bodhisattva vows means that I have dedicated my life to aiding others in their search for enlightenment (and it does), then this is clearly one of the ways I have chosen to do so. Do I feel like I am upholding my vow in this regard? Not so much.

The issue has to do with much more than providing for new posts while I’m away on business or vacation, though. It has to do with taking risks, putting myself out there, and opening myself up to whatever may come. Just posting quotations and links to articles incurs very little risk. (Though, every time I refer to Chogyam Trungpa or Mother Theresa I set off a maelstrom! Can you say “polarizing individuals”?). My approach has been quite safe from criticism, quite safe from someone disagreeing or saying that I’m flat out wrong, quite safe from steering someone wrong and living with the consequences.

But more and more I find people reaching out for help publicly on the page and directly to me in private. Am I not responsible for helping them find an answer? I believe that, as the creator and maintainer of the page, I am. It is not a responsibility I sought, but I find that I am grateful for it and willing to embrace it.

I once heard one of my personal heroes and mentors, Bishop Walter Dennis, address a group of layreaders—people who read the Bible lessons to the congregation during church services. He emphasized the importance of preparation and taking the task of the layreader seriously by saying, “When you read the lessons, it may be the first time that someone has ever heard the scriptures, or it may be the last time they ever hear them because they will enter heaven before attending church again.” What an awesome responsibility! When it comes to this Facebook page, is it really any different? It could be the first time a visitor has ever read the Dharma or it could be the last time. Do I not owe it to them to provide something worthy of such occasions? I believe I do.

The denizens of Dharma Beginner may have noticed recently that my offering of quotations has come with some additional thoughts attached. That is me putting myself out there, expressing what the quotation says to me. That is me taking a little risk by exposing what I know and—more often—what I don’t know, opening myself up to disagreement, to the possibility that I will offend, to the chance that someone will read what I wrote and “unlike” the page, never to return. That would pain me indescribably, but I believe the potential gain, for the visitors and for me, to be far greater.

For a time now, I have been talking with my therapist about feeling called to do something different with my life, to set aside what I do now professionally in order to pursue a career helping other people spiritually. It’s a scary proposition: I’m very good at what I do now (as a researcher and author on government finance), I’m respected and well-known nationally within my particular industry, and I make a decent living. I have no idea if I’d be any good at being an author and speaker on spiritual matters, or whether I could support myself and my family doing so. So I’ve decided to take a small step in that direction, a toe dipped in the water, and the Dharma Beginner page is the base of operations from which I’m going to start doing that. I’ve been using the Twitter account associated with the page (@dharmabeginner) more often. I’m thinking about writing some things to submit to other web pages and magazines. I hope you’ll stick with me and continue to lend me your thoughts and opinions and support and friendship. Because it means so very much to me, and because I am so very grateful for it. Thank you.

Mar22

Bearing the Pain of Others

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I learned a lesson today about walking the Bodhisattva path. It started with a painful conversation with my daughter. She was in pain, sad, distressed, and it made my heart break. I never understood that expression, “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you,” until I became a parent myself. When I first understood it, my eyes opened wide with the realization of how much my own parents love me. I felt incredibly humble and enormously grateful. The unconditional love I have for my daughter amazes me no end, and to know that there are people who love me the same way—well, that’s just stupefyingly mind blowing.

A manifestation of the unconditional love I have for my daughter is that I would bear any pain to spare her pain. I would rather endure agony than see her suffer the slightest pain; seeing her in pain is agony. I would bear any pain to spare my wife pain. I would bear any pain to spare my father, my sister, my nieces and nephews—really, anyone in my family—their pain. I love them, feel compassion for them.

Of course, it wouldn’t really be in any of their interests for me to spare them of all their pain. Pain is natural, common, unavoidable, because we are human and prone to suffering. Yes, we all desire to be free of it, but it exists nonetheless. The people we become, we become in part because of the suffering we have endured and overcome. Even if I had the power to spare my family all of their pain, I’m not sure I’d be doing them any favors.

The desire to free them of their suffering, however, is paramount. The compassion I feel when I see a family member in pain springs from my awareness of what pain feels like and my own desire to be free of suffering. Knowing pain’s unpleasantness, knowing that a family member is experiencing it, drives me to want to do all I can to help my daughter, wife, sister, father free themselves from their suffering.

I’m getting to the lesson now, bear with me. It occurs to me that a Bodhisattva is one who feels that love, compassion, and desire to help others free themselves from suffering, but for all beings. I try to imagine what it would be like to feel that kind of universal love, and it is difficult to comprehend.

Could I feel the compassion I have for my daughter for a close friend? Would I willingly bear his pain? Yes, I think so.

Could I feel the compassion I have for my wife for an acquaintance? Would I willingly bear her pain? Maybe.

Could I feel the compassion I have for my sister for a stranger? Would I willingly bear his pain? I don’t know.

Could I feel the compassion I have for my father for someone who has committed terrible crimes? Would I willingly bear her pain? If I’m going to be honest, then no, I don’t think I’d be able to. Not yet.

But I want to. I really do. And that’s a step in the right direction.

Jan29

Karma Lottery

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It is my view that life is not about grand gestures, but rather a multitude of small acts; individually almost unnoticeable. Out of the innumerable beings that exist, only a relative few accumulate positive karma toward a precious human birth via a great act—martyrdom, or saving another’s life, for instance. Heck, precious few receive a precious human birth, period.

At any rate, one plays a dangerous game if one depends upon such an eventuality to ensure rebirth in the human realm. One may reach the end of this life still waiting on that opportunity, having squandered countless chances to build positive karma along the way. It would be like deciding not to work and earn income because you expect to win the lottery.

Nor should one seek out a bold act, perhaps by putting oneself in harm’s way, in the hope of hitting the karma jackpot. Even if successful, your store of positive karma may still not be sufficient and, depending upon the outcome, you may no longer be able to accumulate karma of any kind in this lifetime.

We may, in fact, do great things with our lives. My point is not to say we are not destined for such. To the contrary, I believe we are. But I don’t believe we are called to live life saving up for the big moment. I believe we are called to spend every moment like a big moment, in search of opportunities to commit acts of compassion and love of all sizes, to give of ourselves, to make others’ lives better.

The big things may indeed come along, and if we have lived this life of daily compassion we will be well prepared to act.

I think of compassion like a particular muscle that requires daily exercise to remain strong, and which otherwise atrophies rapidly. Using that muscle daily to show love in myriad ways makes it strong, supple, and conditioned for endurance, for the long haul. Occasional heavy lifting with that muscle will not build it up as well, and certainly will not give it the responsiveness and endurance it will require when the big need, the opportunity for a major contribution, does indeed come along.

Jan23

Snowshoeing Meditation

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Thich Nhat Hanh has his niche, walking meditation. (Okay, his “niche” is as wide as the Grand Canyon, but humor me.) Now I’ve found my niche, snowshoeing meditation.

I went snowshoeing for the first time today, on a crisp, sunny morning. (By crisp, I mean cold enough that exposed fingers could be snapped off like icicles hanging from your gutter.) The snow was nearly pristine, save for a handful of human and dog footprints (and the occasional patch of yellow snow) and a couple of bicycle grooves. The sun was bright, if not warm. There was nary another soul to be seen.

Perfect conditions for meditation. Snowshoeing meditation is going to take off. Get in on the front end before the meditation trails fill up with meditators. Because they will, when people hear about the rare insights that I found while trudging through the powder.

Humility

Mortal embarrassment is a reasonable approximation of humility. I was no more than a tenth of a mile into my first snowshoe journey when I stepped on one snowshoe with the other snowshoe and tumbled head first, ass second. Laying on my stomach, snowshoes tangled behind me, snow in my face, I benefited from the unique perspective of looking up at the rest of the world. Lest I think the experience a fluke, I repeated it misstep for misstep a mere five minutes later. No mistaking the message: This is the way I ought to look at the world.

Impermanence

Barely a day ago, this path along the Tarrytown reservoir was bare, perhaps sporting the occasional dead leaf. Late yesterday it was a pristine boulevard of unmarked snow. With the passage of each hiker, dog walker, squirrel, deer, child on a mountain bike, and other wild animals, the path changed. Sometimes slightly, imperceptibly; sometimes significantly, unmistakably. No doubt, as the day progressed, more and more beings passed through, experiencing a different path from the one I did, and altering the path again. Tomorrow it promises to be warmer, there may even be some rain, and the path will change again.

Attachment

Fresh snow resting atop tree branches is a lovely, peaceful sight. There was plenty of evidence of the damage last year’s major snowstorms did, however, with the woods populated by jagged stumps of trees that had snapped in two from the weight of the snow. Occasionally, as I passed a younger tree bending under its snow coat, I would poke a branch with one of my walking poles. Freed of its burden, the tree would snap upright again. The things that we attach ourselves to, or that attach to us, can weigh us down as well, bending us over under their accumulation. Meditation, acts of compassion, and other practices are needed to shake those attachments off and free us to walk the path uprightly.

Mindfulness

As I neared the end of my snowshoe trip, I was beginning to draft this blog post. That’s the way I generally write. By the time I sit down to type, much of what I intend to write is already in my head. That’s neither good nor bad, but it’s definitely not conducive to snowshoeing. I guess I had already forgotten the lesson of face planche-induced humility. My snowshoes tangled again, nearly dumping me on my melon once more. I literally heard the words in mind, Pay attention! I had stopped being mindful of the main task at hand, putting one snowshoed foot in front of the other, rather than on top of the other. I was grateful for the lesson, and thankful that it didn’t take another face full of snow to learn.

So, am I right? Snowshoeing meditation is going to be all the rage, right? Hello?

Dec14

Exchanging Holiday Bliss for Blues

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Growing up as a Christian, Christmas was always more than gifts and decorations and sugar cookies. There was a deeply spiritual aspect of it as well, one that grew in importance as I matured. The season of Advent led me steadily toward a solemn contemplation of the extraordinariness of God being born as a defenseless infant, in a stinky hay-filled stall no less.

The activities of church competed with the activities of the “season”—the joyous camaraderie of the “greening” of the sanctuary and polishing of the brass; the celebratory hubbub of the packed pews at midnight mass on Christmas Eve; the quiet contemplative air of the sparsely populated pews on Christmas morning. These continued to be cherished memories and colored my experience of the month of December after I stopped attending church a couple of years ago.

It was one year ago that I realized I had become a Buddhist, shortly after Christmas. Perhaps then I was unwittingly feeling what I am quite aware of now, and what is making me wonder what this holiday is all about for someone who is not Christian.

When the Christmas displays began popping up in stores and the carols started playing on the radio, something felt off. It took me a couple of weeks of puzzling over why I wasn’t being caught up in the Christmas spirit before I realized that the something missing was that deep spiritual aspect of Christmas. Feelings related to beliefs and a faith no longer central to my spiritual life were gone, and I keenly felt the loss. And the feeling was heightened by a greater awareness of what was left—the singularly spirit-devoid secular aspects of the holiday season.

Don’t get me wrong: the holidays are certainly spirited. But the mass consumerism of the season seems soulless to me and leaves me sad at feeling divided from the majority of those around me who are bright and bubbly and full of Christmas cheer. I’m not being judgmental. This is not about the behavior of other persons, it’s about feeling unanchored in a maelstrom of materialism.

What is left for me in the December holidays? Putting up a tree and decorations feels…weird, for lack of a more precise word. Why are we exchanging gifts? Why are schools and businesses closing? What’s the point? It all seems empty and meaningless to me now. I am going through the motions without independent thought as to why.

I haven’t yet resolved this quandary to any great extent, and welcome anyone’s thoughts. In the meantime, I am focusing on making this an occasion to act on compassion, to seek out opportunities to support causes and activities devoted to helping the needy and disadvantaged. It seems like a good time to invigorate what should be a daily practice as a new year fast approaches. Hit the compassion ground running (giving?), so to speak.

Jul13

Have Dharma, Will Travel

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I traveled to Washington, DC, yesterday evening, July 12, to participate in the Kalachakra Initiation being conducted by His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama. I travel quite frequently for business, and thereby have encountered just about every travel situation imaginable. On the basis of that experience, I feel safe in concluding that the true intention of the ever-prescient Dharma was to guide modern travelers.

Was there ever a thing that cried out more loudly for heaping helpings of patience, wisdom, love, compassion, and understanding than traveling by plane or train? Especially in the post-September 11 world? I rest my case.

If find that traveling is a never-ending opportunity to exercise compassion for my fellow beings. To be truthful, I used to be as angry and uptight a traveler as anyone. Every little delay, gate change, slight inconvenience I viewed as a personal affront. What did the travel gods have against me? What devious misdeed did I commit in a past life that I should have to suffer such outrageous indignities in this life? Is this ridiculously small bag of pretzels a sick joke? Imagine what I was like when flights were canceled, baggage was lost, or my aisle seat reservation was mislaid and I was re-seated between two very large, very sweaty men!

Obviously, nothing that ever happened to me while traveling was personal. My delusional view of the world, blended with my unreasonable expectations, guaranteed that I would always be disappointed with the actual turn of events. Is there anything more delusional than expecting travel to go off without a hitch?

My travel experiences began to change when I abandoned my expectations and approached each trip openly, prepared to accept whatever happened. Delays ceased to be ordeals and became opportunities. Airline employees ceased to be enemies and became fellow beings who suffer and yearn to be free of suffering and, most importantly, whose suffering I might be able to help alleviate. (A big smile and an enthusiastic “thank you” can work wonders on the mood of a gate employee. Try it out some time.) Flight crews and other passengers ceased to be objects of derision and became focal points for compassion.

My flight to Baltimore last night was delayed 90 minutes or more. The consequence? I had time to get a much-needed 30-minute back and shoulder massage. The flight arrived so late that I missed my Amtrak train to DC. The consequence? I caught a MARC train instead and saved $17.

When I arrived in DC, the taxi line was quite long and I was not in the mood to stand and wait in the heat (still 90 degrees at 10 pm). So I walked the mile or so to my hotel from Union Station, pulling my suitcase behind me. (In what reality is walking a mile with luggage in heat and humidity preferable to standing still? None.) The consequence? A very large blister below my left big toe. One that is likely to remind me over and over these next few days that I should have held onto my patience just a little while longer and exercised a modicum of wisdom.

Jul10

Competitive Gluttony

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This past Independence Day, I was treated to a jaw-droppingly disgusting sight. A dozen or so persons stood before a table piled high with hotdogs in buns. They proceeded to stuff, push, shove, and crunch, crush, thrust, propel, and otherwise cajole dozens of hotdogs into their ravening maws. (I’m sorry, “mouths” just didn’t seem descriptive enough.) A crowd of hundreds chanted and cheered them on. I believe the “winner” consumed 64 hotdogs in 10 minutes. All in all, the competitors together ate enough food to feed a large family for a month or more. I was appalled, to say the least.

It’s not that I was previously unaware of “competitive eating.” I’d just managed to avoid it. But while working out at the gym on an elliptical machine, Sports Center was on the TV in front of me, leaving me more or less captive as ESPN presented an extended montage of the Nathan’s 4th of July hotdog eating contest, complete with slow motion images of the face stuffing, of food tumbling from the lips of the force feeders, of hideous grimaces as they strove to inject that 39th hotdog down their gullets. Thankfully, the sound was off, so I didn’t have to hear what I imagined—based on the closed captioning—to be the mock gravitas in the announcer’s voice.

The juxtaposition of an eating competition with the dire hunger that is prevalent in so many places in the world is, of course, what sickened me. I think that even a starving person wouldn’t heedlessly scarf down food the way those competitors did. I wonder how someone with bulimia or anorexia would have felt watching them choose voluntarily to overeat, almost as if they were competing to do the best imitation of an eating disorder. I was offended just contemplating it.

I just don’t get it. How can a basic life function be the subject of a competition? Competitive breathing? (Actually, there might be competitive nonbreathing, people trying to hold their breath under water the longest.) Competitive sleeping? (I might be able to turn pro.) Competitive fingernail growing? (Ewwwww.) I’ll stop there.

Competitive eating strikes me as antithetical to compassion. Gluttony might be an antonym for compassion. Consuming far more than you need rather than sharing it with others is the opposite of what Buddha would have us do—which is, to give of what we have to those who need it. Bodhisattvas postpone their own passage into nirvana—the thing we all are working toward—in order to assist others in reaching enlightenment. It’s impossible to imagine a bodhisattva participating in an eating contest.

I am told that Nathan’s donated 100,000 hotdogs and buns to the needy. I’m glad to hear that, though it hardly compensates for the gluttonous spectacle they conducted. Let’s just hope those needy persons were given more than 10 minutes to eat the hotdogs.

Jun25

Tears of Rage

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Waiting near my gate at Dulles International Airport, I witnessed a distressing scene. An irate traveler was shouting at an airline employee, every sentence punctuated with at least one obscenity. Some sentences were solely obscenities connected with prepositions and pronouns, suggesting all new lyrics for the song “Conjunction Junction.” I found my attention divided between staring at this enraged man and observing how the others gathered near the gate were reacting. Like me, they wore masks of shock and embarrassment, desperate to look away but drawn to look back in morbid curiosity.

If they were anything like me, perhaps they were shocked that one person could treat another person so cruelly, so disrespectfully, so violently. At the same time, maybe they were embarrassed at recognizing the seed of that kind of behavior inside themselves, remembering times they themselves spoke harshly to another.

Apparently, he had been at the airport for a long time—I think I heard him say 10 hours. He was facing a further delay of a couple of hours, with no promise that his flight would actually take off. He stated—quite colorfully—that he did not want to spend the night in the airport. That his outbursts left the employee at the gate flustered and unable to assist him only made the traveler more furious. Of course, as in 99 percent of these situations, the employee who was the target of the traveler’s anger and expletives was in no way responsible for the traveler’s suffering and discomfort.

None of that really matters, though, does it? Those facts are poor excuses for the traveler’s behavior. There may be explanations for his behavior (unsatisfactory as they may be), but there are no excuses, as far as I’m concerned. He was, in my opinion, acting inexcusably.

The call to do no harm means more than just not killing or physically harming another being. I remember a sign at St. Mary’s Convent, in Peekskill, which explained that silence is more than just not speaking; silence also extends to actions and motions, which can be as disturbing to silence as speech. Likewise, doing no harm is not limited to refraining from physical abuse, but extends to abusive and injurious language, gestures, temperament, and thought.

Further, I believe that it is not sufficient just to do no harm. While we refrain from harm, I believe that we are called simultaneously to commit kindness—to care for and protect other beings, to seek out opportunities to help, comfort, and console.

I was relieved, admittedly, to board my plane and escape the poisoned atmosphere of the gate area. I was choked up with compassion for the airline employees (for there were three who were absorbing the traveler’s vitriol by this time). And, I was surprised to discover, with compassion for the traveler, for the pain in his life that drove him to inflict pain on others. I wondered what must be going on at his home, his job, his place of worship, to fill him with so much anger. And I loved him, just as he was, and prayed that the Buddha-nature that lives in him, like any other being, would emerge someday soon and soothe his sorrow and rage.

[Why not walk the path with me on Twitter, too? @DharmaBeginner]

Jun17

Do Buddhists Pray?

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Prayer has been central to my life for as long as I can remember. I was sustained as a Christian by two kinds of prayer—contemplative prayer, in which I would seek a quiet place alone with God, and intercessory prayer, in which I would raise up to God the concerns of family and friends. Now that I am a Buddhist, contemplative prayer has become meditation, seeking a quiet place where I can be fully aware of myself and in touch with my Buddha-nature.

But what about intercessory prayer? Friends and family are still in need; and now, as a Bodhisattva-wannabe, I’ve taken on an additional concern for all beings. Who do I pray to now? Is it praying anymore if I don’t recognize a god who can answer prayers? Should I be offering up my prayers to the universe, to nature, to Buddha? I know the answer to the last one is “no,” I’m just making a rhetorical flourish.

But these are not rhetorical questions, people! I need answers. I feel the need for an outlet for the love, compassion, and concern that I feel for others, both those I know and those I don’t. Right now, I just feel confused and uncertain. When I detect a prayer welling up inside of me, I don’t know what to do with it anymore.

What does it mean now if I pray, “I hope Joe beats the cancer that is making him so ill”? Who is listening? Am I doing him or me any good?

May2

Disappointment to Compassion in 24 Hours Flat

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In roughly the last 24 hours, I have progressed from deep disappointment to an even deeper compassion. How, you ask? (Or I hope you ask.) Well, sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip…

I have been planning for months to attend His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s conducting of the Solitary Yamantaka Initiation and a subsequent public talk on ethics and meditation. I used miles to purchase my flight, saved money for the hotel, rental car, and meals, read more than a dozen books recommended by the host, Gaden Shartse Thubten Dargye Ling monastery in Long Beach California, and spent many hours meditating and preparing to take the bodhisattva and Yamantaka vows.

The disappointment began yesterday when I drove almost two hours south to Escondido to meet my dad at one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s monasteries, Deer Park. When I arrived, the monastery’s gate was closed and no one was answering the monastery’s telephone. But most importantly, I got to spend time with my dad, who I hadn’t seen in over a year.

When I returned to Long Beach yesterday evening, I learned that due to a mechanical problem the Dalai Lama’s plane had been delayed. Personal check: feeling a little concern, but certain all would be fine. A short while later, an email arrived saying that His Holiness’ physicians had recommended that he not travel, and therefore both the initiation and the public talk were cancelled. Personal re-check: massive disappointment. No, that word is not strong enough. Not getting to see Deer Park was disappointing; this was…devastating.

I could sense at my deepest depths that disappointment was not the proper emotion to be feeling, but damned if I didn’t wail and weep and gnash teeth (figuratively, at least). To my credit, I didn’t get angry. Small victory. But I was untethered for a time, wondering what I was to take from this turn of events, momentarily entertaining the notion that His Holiness’ failure to appear was somehow the result of something I had done wrong, or maybe my unworthiness to participate in the initiation. I dismissed this in favor of briefly wondering what someone else attending the initiation had done to cause this. Meditation helped me to settle, but I drifted off bereft.

This morning I attended a replacement talk by Khen Rinpoche Jangchub Choeden, abbot of Gaden Shartse monastery in India, and the speaker Friday night. This was the first of three times today that I heard Rinpoche apologize for His Holiness not being able to make the events. Each time, he nearly brought me to tears. His humility, compassion, and heartfelt sadness for us made my face burn with shame remembering how I had reacted to the news. Bless him for helping me to turn my focus to what these events and conditions were meant to teach us.

Here’s the precious gem I found in his presentation: “The realization [of renunciation] never comes in a jackpot, but in the way you save your money day by day.” Enlightment is not a sudden and miraculous happening, but a slow and steady process. I think maybe I was trying to hit the jackpot with this trip to Long Beach. Perhaps I saw an initiation conducted by the Dalai Lama himself as a shortcut to being a bodhisattva. Much more contemplation is needed, and I’m sure there are other lessons waiting to be uncovered.

This much I am sure of: A day in which you get to hear Khen Rinpoche, Robert Thurman, and Thupten Jinpa speak can only seem anything less than stellar when you were expecting to hear the Dalai Lama. Under any other scenario, that is a major trifecta.

Throughout the course of today, the disappointment seeped away, to be replaced with compassion for people who truly have a right to be disappointed that the Dalai Lama could not be here:

– The volunteers who have worked so hard over the past four days and more, and were looking forward to a welcome reception with His Holiness

– The organizers of these events, who have devoted so much time and resources to planning and implementing them

My heart is filled with love and compassion for them, not to mention gratitude for everything they have done. This weekend may not have been what I expected, but it certainly was nevertheless very special, in no small part because of their effors and their relentlessly high spirits despite the disappointment they must be feeling.

But it was Professor Thurman who really drove the message home. At a lunch for sponsors, he said something to the effect that the Dalai Lama carries all of the suffering of Tibet in his heart, so he’s entitled to have a sore throat and get an extra day of rest. Indeed. And then, at the afternoon talk, Dr. Thurman very gently launched this explosive device: “We’re missing the Dalai Lama [today]; how do you think the Tibetan people feel?”

Wow. My heart, already brimming with compassion, burst at that point. If the lovely woman next to me, Rhonda, noticed my sniffling and tears, she was kind enough not to mention it. That puts it all in perspective, doesn’t it? I didn’t have His Holiness for one day; they haven’t had him in their midst for over 50 years.

I think I can make it a little longer without being in his presence. Though I don’t have to, because he’s already in mine, occupying my mind, filling my heart. As Professor Thurman put it, in his inimitable style, “Stop moping about him not being present; he is present in your lives, every day.”