The Heat of Life
A student recently posed this question: How and why to set a side time to sit when the world feels like it is on fire.
When we feel the world is on fire, that life is chaotic, or we feel powerless, this is the perfect time to sit in meditation. It’s there that we can work with the fire.
What’s burning? What is creating the discomfort? Is it anger, desire, greed, pride or jealously or do we ignore what’s going on? Do we react from habitual patterns, or do we respond to what’s arising moment to moment? Sitting gives us the opportunity to create that gap or space, where we can choose how to respond, rather than react out of habitual patterns. It’s a choice between unskillful or skillful action. Recognizing when we get hooked by these feelings and emotions, and from where are they coming is something that we can begin to unravel through meditation and with the help of a teacher.
Practice gives us the opportunity to develop equanimity, to experience an expansive spaciousness, to sit quietly in the eye of the storm. Then we’re better able to respond to the fires all around us, responding appropriately given the time, the place, our position, and in the right amount. As a litigator with a stressful litigation practice, bringing the equanimity experienced from meditation into the workplace and courtroom was invaluable to me, and perhaps helpful for others with whom I worked or interacted.
If a house is on fire, we would imagine that the occupants would want to get out of the house immediately. However, some may not know it’s on fire, or chose to ignore the fire, others may know the house is on fire but don’t know how to exit the house, others may not want to leave the house because it is something they think they know. The question recalls the Buddha’s Parable of the House on Fire in the Lotus Sutra. While taking a few liberties with the story, in general, the father or mother is outside the house and sees the house is on fire, and yells to the children to leave, but the children don’t wish to leave, so the parent tells them if they leave there will be a gift outside for them. They come running out but the gift is not what they expected. Although not what they expected they nevertheless left the house and were saved from the fire. The story reflects the skillful means of the Buddha, giving us a way out of the burning house of suffering. The gift was the Buddha’s teaching, one of which is the path of the Bodhisattva.
When the whole world seems to be on fire, this is when we do what we can. The bird may leave its nest to pick up a drop of water in it’s beak, and carry it to the fire, and then go back for more, dropping that drop of water on the fire, again and again, in order to save it’s nest and the forest it lives in. That is what we can do, to take action to respond to what is needed at the time, given our ability to do so, and in a way that is appropriate given the time, the place, our position, and the amount. The Bodhisattva commits to practice for the benefit of all sentient beings, including for oneself.