Today’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.
Great. 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.
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!
Dharma, even though I didn’t practice Christianity, there was the underlying belief that I (and the other people I meet) are human beings because we were made that way. Somewhere in the distant past a girl and a boy (also human, of course) shared chromosomes and genes, I gestated inside a womb, then voila! I was born human, part of a species.
I grew up in the Bronx, just about forty minutes from Manhattan by subway. My favorite places to go in Manhattan were Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue, the New York Public Library, and Steuben Glass. In Manhattan, the homeless are everywhere. They are unavoidable. In winter they shuffle along in too-thin coats, walking up to you and asking for money. In summer, they sit on the boiling hot sidewalks with signs: BLIND. PLEASE HELP. And nearly without exception, they are ignored, given a wide berth, as though being homeless were a deadly plague that could be caught. Even when people give money, it’s done with averted eyes, and from a prudent distance.
dharma pen 