My Bad
How has a mistake, shortcoming, or misfortune enriched your Buddhist practice?
As students of Buddhism, we try to be good people. In our practice, we try to cultivate the paramitas— patience, generosity, exertion, and the like—for these are essential to a well-lived life. And not only do we try to be good people living a good life; we aspire to be enlightened people living an enlightened life. But let’s face it: most of the time we’re greedy, crazy, and full of ourselves, just like everyone else.
We are, after all, deluded beings. We make mistakes, including mistakes in how we tread the path. Some of them are enormous, some of them are silly, some of them are enormously silly. We are human beings. We suffer, like Hamlet, the slings and arrows of our outrageous fortunes, to say nothing of the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.
But sometimes it is precisely such things—our mistakes, our shortcomings, our misfortunes—that are the source of our best learning. We at Tricycle thought that in our second annual Tricycle Question we would try to shine more light on this side of practice. We asked ten practitioners and teachers to share their experience.
So here is our question:
How has a mistake, shortcoming, or misfortune enriched your Buddhist practice?
Illustrations © Minette Mangahas
Comments
Cleaning My Place
Thirty years ago I was in New York City staying in a friend's loft in Soho. At the time I was looking into Zen practice, had read some books but had never sat zazen.
Looking in the Yellow Pages I discovered I was a mere two blocks from the Soho Zen Center. I called and was told of their beginner's night. The night came and I arrived (early!), walking up the stairs of an apartment on (as i remember) West Broadway.
Sitting in the kitchen at the top of the stairs, reading a newspaper and drinking tea was Kyudo Nakagawa Roshi. He indicated the direction of the zendo, a small room in the front of the apartment.
There were two Asian men in the room already seated. I took my place on a cushion and twisted myself into a full lotus position. The three of us waited silently until Roshi appeared.
First thing he did was ask me (in a heavy Japanese accent) why I was sitting like that. I said I'd seen it in a book. He told me "You not ready for that" and I gratefully unfolded myself. He instructed us in breath counting and we sat for a couple of short periods. Afterwards he spoke for a few minutes. Then we were done.
I walked out of the zendo and was in the hallway when I heard Roshi's stern voice call out, "Scuse me!" Then again, louder, "SCUSE ME!" I peeked back into the zendo. He pointed at my cushion and said, "You leave your place a MESS! You clean your anus when you take a SHIT! This much more important than that!!"
I was horrified.
I slunk over and neatened my zafu and zabutan and dashed out.
Only later did I realize that in my haste I'd left my book (Aitken's "Taking the Path of Zen"). The next day I called and was given permission to come over and get it.
Roshi was sitting in the kitchen reading the paper. I went to the closet and got my book and as i was leaving I said, "I'm terribly sorry about yesterday." He looked at me quizzically. "About leaving my place a mess," I explained.
"Oh that. Forget about that." He went back to his paper.
The lessons are obvious and have never left me.
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get over it
For years I have asked job applicants a question about how they handled the worst mistake they ever made. I said I didn't want or need to know what the mistake was, but just how they handled it. There were no right answers to the question, but there was one definitely bad answer: I don't make mistakes. In about 20 years of interviews, only one person flat out said "I don't make mistakes." A few struggled with their answers as they fought the inclination to say they didn't make mistakes. Interestingly, a number were quite open and honest about what the mistake was. Many gave what they thought was the "correct" answer, i.e., that they admitted the mistake and took responsiblity. Among them it was fascinating to try to discern whether they really meant it. In any case, I found this "my bad" series interesting for the same variety of responses, ranging from personal acceptance of the respondent's fallibility to rote recitation of a book answer.
Not that my insight into myself is any better. I thought about making this comment for a few days. It was only today that I said, wait a minute, this question applies to me, too. When my wife was first diagnosed with brain cancer, I was interested in Buddhism as a philosophy, In the 15 months since then, more and more Buddhism has become a practice that has kept me sane, particularly the four noble truths. (1) Life sucks. (2) Get over it. (3) That means, get over yourself. (4) Now, move on.