Wool-gathering

Mulla Nasrudin bought one of those new hearing aids that are practically invisible. He was told that he could return it if it didn’t prove twice as good as the cumbersome device he had been using. He stopped by a few days later to express his satisfaction with the new device. “I bet your family likes it too,” said the clerk. “Oh, they don’t even know I have got it,” said Nasrudin. “and do you know what? I am having more fun with it! In the past two days, i have changed my will three times.”
My sir once gave an exercise. It’s to see our actions from others’ point of view. So I recalled my behaviour through the eyes of the recipients.

When I did that I could perfectly understand their reaction towards me. We are so immersed in our self-importance and so sure about our infallibility , we just don’t understand why someone is behaving in a way he/she is behaving towards us. And we complain!

Well, that exercise did not change my behaviour (moot point), but I accepted the response with equanimity . The result is I did not change my will nor did I expect others to change theirs. That certainly is an improvement.

Most of my distress happens because of “how can she/he do this/talk like this/behave like this to me?”. Yes, the stress is on ‘to me’. Why so? Logically speaking if they can speak like that to others, they can do that to me also. My sir told once “be prepared for the worst but expect the best”. This helps in dealing with people. That way, any decent behaviour makes me ecstatic and lousy behaviour keeps me entertained . (Again, ‘decent’ and ‘lousy’ are as per my criteria).

When I was chatting with my husband this morning, we had one of those rare agreements. That everybody tries to control others in an interaction. It’s all about ‘who is the boss’. In any relationship or interaction between strangers, we can notice this. Our best bitchy behaviour is always directed towards our family members, by the way. In case of women – husband excluded because he can run away from you (exceptions allowed). Children, being children, are always at the worst end of bargain. May be that is why they say ‘children are God’ because they love us with the best and worst side of us included.

By the way, talking of ‘making wills’ I think that that is another way of making others know ‘who is the boss’ even after one dies (I’m not saying don’t make a will).

My sir once said that ‘love is the ability to absorb any nonsense’. True. There is no “if you really love me, you will do this” in love. It’s “whatever you do, I love you”. It’s all inclusive and not exclusive. It’s accepting the other as he/she is with all the baggage – good and not so good.

In fact, there are no good people. There are people (or there are men and there are women) – sometimes good and sometimes not so good (dependending on your perspective).
Where am I? I see that I have wandered away from the point. It doesn’t matter. Since I’ve come this way, let me quote this zen poem too (courtesy dailyzen.com)

The voidness of the universe
Is capable of containing all
Things of various forms and shapes,
Such as the sun, moon, stars,
Mountains, rivers, the great earth,
Springs, streams, mountain torrents,
Plants, trees and woods,
Good and bad people,
Good and bad things,
Heavens and hells,
All the great oceans.
All these are in the void.
The voidness of worldly people Is also like it.
- Altar Sutra