Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye. Two years after I took the monastic vows, trading all my worldly possessions for a pair of monks' robes, I moved into a monastery that was off the grid, remote, and blissfully quiet. One day, my friend Kim sent me a letter saying, "Timber, I understand why you love
"living there, I mean, who wouldn't? But how can you honor your vows "to be of service to others if you cut yourself off from the rest of the world "and keep yourself tucked away in the mountains somewhere?" Kim didn't point out my hypocrisy because she's cruel or judgmental, she did it to shed light on what I couldn't see from where I was sitting: that my actions were not congruent with my words. There was no reason for me to get defensive because Kim wasn't on the offensive.
In fact, Kim's comment had nothing to do with her personal needs or opinions, it was about me saying one thing and doing another. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret moving to the monastery in the first place, but after Kim's intervention, I couldn't justify staying. NVC, Non-Violent Communication, considers unsolicited advice a form of bullying and judgment.
But Kim's comment wasn't unsolicited, I have an understanding with all my friends that being supportive of one another does not mean blindly cheering each other on. For instance, if any of us are about to repeat a harmful cycle that we swore we wanted to break, be it drinking to excess, getting into another dysfunctional relationship, or deviating from a path we have previously claimed we wish to follow, we welcome intervention.
I mean, I wouldn't tell my buddy John to stop smoking because Johnny never claimed he wanted to stop, but I would definitely urge my friend Ashley to spend less money if she had previously told me that getting out of debt was her top priority. You see, it's not about pushing my opinions on anyone, it's about supporting their decisions regardless of what I think. In Buddhism, we take refuge in what are called
The Buddha, The Dharma, and The Sangha; the teacher, the teachings, and other students on the path.
My friends ARE my Sangha, or my congregation, if you prefer, and since you are my friend, and you're on this path with me, this month's intervention is similar to what Kim offered me many years ago: it's an invitation to reflect on areas in our lives where we are being hypocrites; areas where we are not behaving in ways that are congruent with who we wish to be, and sometimes who we even publicly claim to be.
We aren't always honest with ourselves because we often have too much shame or guilt around the decisions we make. Other times, we are oblivious that we are out of alignment. Today, I urge you not to look back on your past behavior and wonder why you've done what you've done before, but to decide how you can live from this moment forward so that what you think, what you say, and what you do, are all in harmony.
I warn you though, something is going to have to shift, because you will either have to change what you think, what you say, or what you do, before you can live a congruent life. In other words, do your decisions reflect your values? Heck, do you even know what your
values are? Many of us never take the time to write them down. For example, do we actually value being considerate, or do we just like to think of ourselves as considerate neighbors even though we regularly run the dishwasher at one a.m. in our third-floor apartment with no consideration to our downstairs neighbors. These little things make a big difference because the way we do one thing is the way we do all things, so let's do it all mindfully.
Congruence, consistency, and transparency require us to be vulnerable and honest with ourselves about our strengths and our shortcomings. So go ahead and write down the kind of person you wish to be as well as the kind of person you currently are, and you will see for yourself where you have some work to do. Consider this your own intervention, which is defined as the action of becoming intentionally involved in a difficult situation in order to improve it or to prevent it from getting worse.
Interventions like Black Lives Matter and the Me Too Movement have forced all of us to examine where we have unknowingly, unintentionally, or unconsciously been racist or failed to demand equality, even while we claimed to believe in it. And just like simply wearing a monk's robes does not make a monk, or wearing a cross-necklace does not make you a Christian, in the words of Tyler Durden, "Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken."
What we're talking about is having a strong conviction to live in line with our values, so that we stay in our integrity and avoid all unnecessary suffering or battling with internal struggles. Suzuki Roshi once said, "There are no enlightened beings, "there's only enlightened activity." The people we consider "enlightened" are just like you and me, they simply make enlightened activity part of their daily lives,
they walk the talk. I think it's why my own teachers asked me one day, "Why do you need the robes?" "Why can't you just be the guy in town with the bright eyes?" Indeed, why can't we all? Timber Hawkeye is the bestselling author of Faithfully Religionless and Buddhist Boot Camp. For additional information, please visit BuddhistBootCamp.com, where you can order autographed books to support the Prison Library Project, watch Timber's inspiring TED Talk, and join our monthly mailing list.
We hope you have enjoyed this episode, and invite you to subscribe for more thought-provoking discussions. Thank you for being a Soldier of Peace in the Army of Love. 🙏🏼