“To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh
“The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.”
~ H.H the Dalai Lama
“Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.”
~Pablo Casals
Dear Friends,
Wishing you lots of joy this Passover and Easter season. This is the time of year when many of us, especially in New England after a long winter, feel the effects of worldly joy, the sun on the skin and the warm air. We see the flowers grow and bloom. Bees get busy and all the birds agree that it’s time to start serious real estate inquiries for the future. Spring can be a time of great rejoicing, but it can also be a time of doubt, both personal and societal.
In spring it may appear that the whole natural world is moving forward, while we are still here, treading water with the same amount of delusion and obstacles we had last year. We may come up short in our assessment of where we want to be spiritually, professionally, and personally. Our government may have us doubting its commitment to bettering the world as we watch our administration veering into the dangerous territory of reactive and punitive legislation and creating a country that cannot sustain itself peaceably.
There is benefit to doubt. It helps us get unstuck and look at what we doing objectively. It allows us to question our means and methodology and check in with the course we are setting for ourselves. This is a healthy constructive doubt. The doubt that the Buddha speaks about is the doubt that leads to confusion and immobility. It can convince us that nothing will get better and lead us to abandon the path out of despair.
For many of us, inclining the mind to what is wrong through comparing and projecting actions and results into the future can fuel our doubt. Doubt is one of the five hindrances that obscure the mind from progressing towards enlightenment. These five are the desire for sense pleasure, aversion or anger, sloth and sleepiness, restlessness and agitation, and doubt. Doubt is one of the stickiest.
The Buddha describes doubt as a “bowl of water that is turbid, unsettled, muddy, placed in the dark. If a man with good sight were to examine his own facial reflection in it, he would neither know nor see it as it really is. So too, brahmin, when one dwells with a mind obsessed and oppressed by doubt, and one does not understand as it really is the escape from arisen doubt, on that occasion one neither knows or sees as it really is one’s own good, or the good of others, or the good of both” (Aṅguttara Nikāya, V 193, Bhodi trans.) The remedy offered by the Buddha to escape from the oppression of doubt that has arisen and doubt that lays in wait is to use clear seeing and to know the goodness of one’s actions and of the goodness and kindness of others. This is the way to remove doubt about our progress and the fear and doubt of others.
We see this recollection and belief in one’s goodness in the enlightenment story of the Buddha. According to Buddhist tradition, when the Buddha was an unenlightened Bodhisattva, and close to enlightenment, he sat beneath a Bhodi tree and vowed to stay in meditation until he achieved liberation. As he sat, he was tested by the embodiment of sensual desire and evil, the god Mara who wants to keep people trapped in rebirth and delusion. Mara sent his terrifying armies to the Buddha to frighten him while the Buddha sat. Unable to upset the Buddha to be, Mara sent his three beautiful daughters to tempt the Buddha into abandoning his quest, but the Buddha was not swayed. In a final push to keep the Buddha from finding the way out of rebirth and suffering, Mara threw the final dart of doubt and claimed the seat of enlightenment for himself, saying his spiritual achievements exceeded the Buddha. But the Buddha sat and reached out his hand and touched the earth with his fingertips, calling upon the Earth herself to witness to his goodness and his spiritual achievements. In this remarkable moment, the Buddha relied upon the wisdom and witness of this earth and the continuum of his goodness in his past. He understood the interdependent life he shared with and through the earth and calling upon the accrued wealth of kindness shown to those who dwell on the earth and to the earth herself was the last task for the Buddha. This brought his clear seeing and freedom.
We all are gifted with Buddha nature, the promise of clear seeing and the ability to wake up. Whether we believe it or not, we all have a luminous mind and purity of heart. This week, I invite you to spend time reflecting on your goodness. Settling into attending to the breath and body, bring to mind your deepest aspirations and intentions. How have you lived these beautiful qualities in the world? Maybe you looked with understanding eyes upon a co-worker who was caught in frustration, gave financial support to someone in need, noticed and spoke to a homeless person who is commonly treated as less than human, or spoke out against injustice raising your voice for those who aren’t heard.
Allowing ourselves to witness to our goodness in the past and commit to practicing our intentional life in the present can dispel the doubt and inertia we all encounter when we don’t see the fruit of our practice. This week, let yourself be touched by your own kindness and rest in the refuge of your care and compassion. We can stop looking for beauty outside of ourselves and return home to claim our birthright, an awakened heart.
May we all trust our light,
Celia
