Compassion Games

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Compassion Games, Day 5

Secret AgentS.A.C. (Secret Agent of Compassion) here, reporting on today’s mission.

Today’s mission is:

Now we must expand our efforts to include all aspects of life within our network. Severely damaging to the natural balance of life on earth is anything that works in opposition to the way of nature. So delicate is this balance that even small, negative actions can start a downward spiral that could doom life as we know it.

Your mission today, agents, should you choose to accept it, is to increase your understanding of the interrelatedness in nature. As an example, consider how, in the process of gathering nectar from a flower, a bee pollinates the flower. So much does the flower need the bee and the bee need the flower, one could think of them as a single species.

Throughout the day, identify ways in which nature achieves its balance. As your understanding of this increases, so will your appreciation for it. By bedtime, complete a tangible act of appreciation for nature that grew from your increased understanding.

I’ve lived in cities all my life. For a long time, I thought grass just happened where there wasn’t a sidewalk or a road. The one part of nature I encountered all the time and whose power I really felt was the weather. I grew up in the north east, and I went to school in the extreme north. Snow storms were the most dangerous things I’d ever encountered until I moved down south and found myself just about hiding under my bed from the howling winds of a hurricane.

skyToday, as my way of carrying out this mission, I thought about the phenomena we call ‘weather’. We live on a world spinning at a thousand miles per hour. On top of that, we’re hurtling through space at a whopping 67, 108 miles per hour. ‘Weather’ is what keeps us alive on this ball of rock and water hurtling and spinning through space. If not for the rain, our oceans would dry up, our crops would fail, and eventually our world be one big desert. If not for the seasons, one side of our world would be in perpetual darkness, and the other in searing, killing heat.

I thought today about how casually we say things like, “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow” or “Why is Texas so hot in the summer?”, but we don’t really stop to think about what would happen if there was no weather at all.

Thinking about this made me realize how ‘weather’ is so integrally a part of our world that it affects our emotions, our plans, even where we decide to live.

I tried to think of a way to separate myself (or anyone) from the cluster of phenomena we call ‘weather’, but I couldn’t. And that made me think of the trees that make our air life-sustaining, the dirt under the thin concrete skin of every city across the globe, and how really, it’s very true that there’s no separation. Does the wind feel different in Tokyo than it does in New York? It might be warmer or cooler. It might carry different scents, but it’s still wind. It still lifts our hair, blows ships off course, and it can blow strong enough to destroy even our greatest cities.

Although I didn’t actually carry out today’s mission by doing something tangible, I did get real insight into how connected we are to our world, and to each other.

And this ends the Secret Agent Report for Day 5 of the Compassion Games.

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Compassion Games – Day 4

Secret AgentS.A.C. (Secret Agent of Compassion) Rookie Reporting on Day 4 of the Compassion Games.

Today’s mission was learning how to take compassion a step further:

To build the global network needed to further disseminate the compassion antidote, we must practice working together. So today’s mission, should you choose to accept it, is to enlist a partner in your compassion efforts.

Are you familiar with the concept 1 + 1 = 3? That’s the idea here, thattogether we are greater than the sum of our parts. There is you. There is your partner. AND there is your partnership.

Let your action of compassion emerge from your partnership.
Saturday White Bread 71 Percent Cast Iron 08 10 14I like to bake. No. Really. I spend a lot of time either baking or thinking …hmmm…wonder what would happen if I… I’ve seen home bakers described as mad scientists, and as an avid home baker, I’d have to agree.

For about a year now, I’ve been baking vegan and sharing what I bake with the homeless. Well, that’s not exactly true. What I actually do is bake bread and muffins on Saturdays, make up ‘take-away’ bags that each have a muffin, a piece of fresh fruit and a snack like potato chips or crackers or something small like that. Then I drop all this stuff off.

This is where the partnership in compassion begins. To be honest, I’ve never seen the place where the bread and muffins get taken to be shared. I have many partners in compassion who help each week. There’s Wendy, who drops off all the stuff; there’s Rinchen who made it possible for this to get started, and there are the people who actually host the lunch for the homeless and give away the bags I make up.

Banana Muffins 08 23 14Today, as part of my mission, I brought Wendy a muffin and thanked her for being a partner in compassion.

Today’s mission made me see how much difference a partnership can make when we do acts of compassion. Me plus Wendy (1 + 1) = 12 homeless people having a little bit more to eat. Today I really understood that if we work with partners in compassion, we can ease the sufferings of many.

 

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Compassion Games, Day 3

Secret AgentSecret Agent of Compassion here, day three of these awesome games!

Today’s mission (which I decided to accept):

Practice being fully present in an interaction with a friend. To do this, try to:

  •   stay centered on your friend
  •   listen without interrupting
  •   focus on what your friend is saying, not on what you might say next
  •   let go of judgments about you, your friend, or others mentioned in the interaction
  •   ask questions to clarify your understanding

I have to admit this was a little bit of a tough mission for me because I’m mostly at home on Saturdays baking or writing or crafting…or all three.

But this morning I had to go grocery shopping. I’ve been going to the same supermarket for about four or five years now. I practically know the cashiers by name.

This morning, instead of doing the banter (How’s your day so far, ma’am?) on auto-pilot, as I usually do, I brought my focus to the young man who was talking to me.

Here’s a funny thing about practicing the Dharma. Even though you read about things and you have an intellectual understanding of things, it’s like lightning striking when you actually experience a teaching in your life.

As I stayed centered, listened without interrupting, focused on what was being said, let go of my seeing clearlyjudgments, and asked questions, he suddenly came into focus for me. It was as though my eyes had suddenly gone from blurry so-so vision, to twenty-twenty crystal clarity. All at once, he wasn’t just a teenage cashier. He was just like me.

Just like me, he was a being with hopes and dreams, who suffers the torments of samsara. Just like me, he was a being who experiences that constant vague dissatisfaction that can drive us through our whole lives, chasing after chimeras like success, or wealth, or power.

The odd thing that’s stayed with me from this experience was the topic of our conversation: how much we both dislike eating breakfast. It was a trivial, meaningless conversation, but at the same time, I saw him, really saw him. And then I saw myself, and all beings in samsara, and how we suffer needlessly.

For a moment as he walked away, I thought…may we all be free from suffering and the causes of suffering…may we all embrace happiness and the causes of happiness…may we all abide in peace, free of self-grasping.

This ends the Mission Report for Day 3 of the Compassion Games!

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Compassion Games – Day 2

Secret AgentToday’s mission in the Games is:

Choose one of your acquaintances and perform an act of kindness for her/him. Acquaintances are people who exist in our lives somewhere between friend and stranger. We know of these people. We just don’t KNOW them. Maybe this person is your letter carrier, a grocery clerk, or a neighbor you don’t know well. Consider doing something for this person that you would like being done for you should the roles be reversed.

 

When I read this, I tried to think about the acquaintances in my life. At first there was nothing. Then gradually, I started to think of the people who cut the grass at the building where I work, the people who keep the bathrooms clean, the staff in the mail room. Once I saw those people, I was able to see others: the cashier where I buy my groceries, the staff in the office of my building, the tellers in my local bank, the police officers and firefighters whose sirens I hear constantly, the maintenance folks in my building. Before I even thought of what to do, I could suddenly see how, even though I think of myself as living a ‘solitary’ life, I’m actually part of a massive web of beings who support me and make my ‘solitude’ possible.

That was a great start! Then I started to think of what to do. At first I was going to bring bagels and cream cheese to some (as yet) undecided acquaintance. But I thought about that. I bake enough to know that in a professional environment, the fastest, cheapest way to get golden brown bagels is to use an egg wash. And of course the cream cheese is a dairy product. I rejected that idea. I didn’t want my compassionate act to be supported by the suffering of the sentient beings in the egg or dairy industry.

Lo! My veil of indifference was beginning to part.

I tried to think of a compassionate (but fun) food to bring to an acquaintance, but I couldn’t. Ahh! Now the game was really afoot. If I wanted to bring a compassionate treat to an acquaintance, I’d have to make it myself. I bake with compassion, and without dairy products.

The next hurdle was that Fridays are typically a workout day on my Monday, Wednesday, Friday routine. Now I had to decide if I wanted to skip a workout so that I could create a compassionate treat. That was a tough one. Skipping a workout day typically makes me feel…bad. But I really wanted to do this. I decided to skip.

Luckily I had a ‘pre-mix’ standing by. On weekends when I bake, I sometimes measure out dry ingredients, bag them, and label them. That way, if I want to bake during the week, I’m ready to go. All I have to do is add the liquids and mix. It’s kind of like having your own homemade boxed mix, except it comes in a Ziploc baggie.

Compassion games Day 2 the boxGreat. Figured out the treat. Now I had to decide which acquaintance. My apartment is in a mock ‘downtown’ area, on the corner of a fairly busy intersection. The building is almost exactly between a fire station and a police station. I could walk to either one in a little more than five minutes. That means that all day long I hear sirens: either fire trucks or police cars.

For a long time when I heard those sirens (especially the fire trucks, which seem REALLY loud), I used to say unkind (and un-publishable in polite company) …ahhh…words. But one morning a couple of years ago, I ended up in the ER at about two A.M. with an anxiety attack that was making breathing a little impossible. After they fixed me up and I was on my way out, I happened to walk by a room where the door was open. Inside were two firefighters. One was on the bed, in obvious pain, and his friend (another firefighter, complete with soot) was standing over him looking sad, vulnerable, helpless.

That really cut into my indifference. I thought to myself…Wow, every time I hear those fire trucks go screaming by, this is how their day could end. And that’s if they’re lucky. The unlucky ones end up in wherever the morgue is hidden in this building. After that, I didn’t feel or say unkind things anymore when I heard the sirens. Now when I hear them, I pray that they’ll be well, and the people they’re on the way to help will get the help they need. Anyway, after eight years of hearing those sirens, I sure feel like the local firefighters are acquaintances.Compassion Games Day 2

I decided to bake chocolate chip oatmeal cookies for the fire station, and add in a bag of coffee that was on sale and that I keep on hand for ‘giving’ when the occasion comes up. ‘Fancy’ boxes were on sale at Michael’s the other day, so I had a couple lying around.

After I dropped off the cookies and coffee, a pretty amazing thing happened. I was actually able to see my indifference. That’s rare. Usually we can’t see our indifference because…well…we’re indifferent to it. Going through my day, I was able to see all the beings that had been completely invisible, relegated to the far side of my shield of indifference.

This was a really wonderful feeling. It seemed to make my world bigger.

Today’s mission taught me a couple of things.

** Compassionate acts cannot rely on the suffering of sentient beings. I totally realized that when I turned down the choice of bagels and cream cheese.

**Indifference makes compassion impossible. My Dharma friend Tashi talks about compassion as ‘the desire to eliminate or reduce the suffering of others’. How can we do that if the acquaintances in our lives are on the other side of our shield of indifference? How can we nurture our capacity to reduce the suffering of other sentient beings if we don’t have the capacity to see past our indifference?

This has been a spectacular mission for this Secret Agent rookie!

 

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Compassion Games – Day 1

Secret AgentOkay. So today’s mission in the Compassion Games was:

Your first mission, should you choose to accept it, is to spread this antidote today by demonstrating compassion for strangers. These are people you typically pass by, maybe even ignore, as you go on with your day. Instead, your job is to think of everyone as your friend. Smile at people, hold doors open, let folks go in front of you. If you can, use your sense of self to decide how to complete at least one act of compassion that requires a tiny bit of additional work on your part.

As I went through my day with this is in the back of my mind, I began to ask myself, why doesn’t this come naturally to us? Why is this something we have to actually pause and think about?

When I walked into work this morning, I said good morning to someone I see all the time, but hardly ever talk to. Nothing personal. It’s just that I know her face, but we don’t really interact.

Starting my day this way made me take a look at the delusions of samsara and how those delusions can twist our actions. One of the biggest delusions I experience in samsara is that I have to be somewhere (pick a place, any place) and I have to hurry. Today, when I paused to say hello to my coworker (whose name I don’t know), I stopped and thought about where I had to go.

It went something like this:

I have to get to my desk. Why?

Because I have to clock in on my computer. Why?

Because I want to get paid. Why?

Because I don’t want to be hungry and homeless. Why?

Because I don’t want to be uncomfortable.

Hmmm…this little exercise made me see how it’s impossible to participate in the delusions of samsara without believing you’re separate from everyone else and that your needs are more important than everyone else’s. In Buddhism we understand that these twin thoughts are a wrong view. There is no separation. If you need compassion, then so does everyone else.

This takes a while to write out, but these thoughts actually went through my head pretty quickly as I was on my way to my desk.

Then I got my first phone call of the day. At first I was hurrying the caller off the phone. Then, just like that, I realized I was putting my need to get back to emails before the caller’s need for information. I slowed down, listened, and with a little digging, I was able to give her the right information, even though she was asking for the wrong information.

Throughout my day, I found that if I took just a tiny half step back, I was able to see that in every instance where I thought I didn’t have time to be compassionate, it was because I was under the delusion that I was separate and that my needs came first.

This was a great first mission for this Secret Agent rookie!