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. I'm going to try to explain how my mind works, and I think it will make sense by the end of the episode, so stick with me, and let's hope it does. The Buddha taught that pain is inevitable but suffering is optional.
That is to say the pain of old age, sickness, and death is inevitable, but we don't have to suffer through it. In mathematical terms: Pain plus Resistance equals Suffering. The cause of suffering, therefore, is not necessarily any experience, but our resistance to it; our opinions and feelings about it. If you think of suffering as the gap between the life you want and the life you've got, then the problem isn't life itself, it's that you want a different one.
That desire for something other than what's right in front of us is the problem. Luckily, there's an easy fix for that, but I only mean "easy" in the sense that you only need to change one thing: your perspective. Have I ever told you the story about Carol, the elderly woman whose husband died after a long battle with cancer? Her son didn't want her to live alone, so he invited her to move in with him in Europe.
During their flight to England, he started to describe the house to her, and she immediately said, "Oh, I love it." "But you haven't even seen it yet," he laughed. "Just wait until we get there." That's when Carol said, "I don't need to see it to love it. Happiness is something we can "choose ahead of time. How much I like the new house has nothing to do with the "exterior paint, the way you've decorated my room, or how you've arranged the furniture.
"It has everything to do with how I choose to look at it, and I've already decided to love it." We don't always get what we want in life, but we DO get what we need. I'll talk more about that later. So, whenever I find myself in less than ideal situations or unfavorable circumstances, I just mutter to myself, "I must need this," and that thought alone takes the sting out.
It's one thing to think back about an experience in the past and be grateful that it happened, it's a different practice altogether to live in gratitude all the time. But keep in mind that I didn't wake up one day and magically started living in gratitude for everything, it was the result of multiple experiences stacking up to finally make it clear to me that much like Carol, I can choose to be happy ahead of time, not just when I look back.
In the summer of 1990, my family and I flew from Israel to the United States to see if we like it enough to maybe consider moving to California someday. We each packed a small suitcase and boarded the plane, and much to my surprise, never got to see our house in Israel again, because my parents decided we're all going to simply stay
in San Francisco for good. My dad flew back for a couple of weeks to sell, donate, or trash all of our possessions, and the rest of us just had to mentally let go of our belongings and move on. There is no way I could have known at the time that starting over at thirteen, learning a new language, and adapting to sudden changes in culture and circumstance, would turn out to be a tremendous gift and a life lesson that is a fundamental part of who I am.
I think it's why leaving for college at eighteen wasn't scary for me, why I still don't get attached to material possessions, honestly dealing with the death of a pet when I was a child helped me better understand the loss of a grandparent later on, and getting dumped by an ex or fired from a job helped me process rejection and redirection when I got older. Each and every one of those experiences was always an incredible life lesson, of course, but at the time I just considered them "hardships."
It's easy to look in our rearview mirror and see the lesson in every experience, but I think we can do better than have great hindsight, we can train ourselves to have immediate insight. Here's how: At one of our monthly Buddhist Boot Camp Discussion Circles, a woman mentioned how a jar of sesame seeds slipped from her hands and spilled all over the kitchen floor. Instead of getting frustrated, she simply muttered to herself, "Well, that was supposed to happen."
How great is that? When I talk about living in gratitude, I don't mean actually WANTING every experience, I mean understanding that it needs to happen. The reasons may not be clear to us right away or ever, or they may be far beyond our limited comprehension. And the reasons don't always revolve around us. We can be grateful for our picnic getting canceled due to rain because we know the rain is necessary for reasons much bigger than ourselves.
From the good to the bad, and the most horrific, from my abuse growing up to moving to a new country as a teenager, getting bullied at school, marriage, divorce, surgeries, skydiving, sickness, and health, literally everything, all of it needs to happen or it wouldn't. From personal trials to global mayhem, nothing ever happens TO us, it all happens FOR us; for us to learn from, grow from, and most importantly,
move on from. We may not like it, but it is necessary. Can you make peace with that and maybe learn to like what is necessary, or at least be grateful for it? Our life lessons take whatever shape they need in order for us to learn them.
You may ignore your spouse begging you to take time off work to relax, disregard your doctor's orders to change your diet, or dismiss your friend's suggestion to start doing yoga or meditate to calm your nerves, but you won't ignore the heart attack that finally forces you to slow down. Actually, that's not true; you may very well ignore the first heart attack, which will make the second one necessary.
So don't resist the lessons. What you resist, persists. Pay attention, and consider everything a necessity. Next time something happens, instead of judging it as good or bad, simply think to yourself, "Well, that was supposed to happen." It's a mantra that can melt away resistance, expectations, and attachment; the very causes of our anguish.
The Buddha didn't just teach that life is suffering, he taught there is a way we can end our suffering, and I believe it's through acceptance, gratitude, and letting go. The serenity prayer beautifully sums it all up: Accept the things you cannot change, have the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
If you find value in these podcast episodes, they are available commercial-free thanks to listeners just like you who donate just one dollar a month through Patreon.com/BuddhistBootCamp. Thank you for investing in yourself. When you work on being a more peaceful person, the world becomes a more peaceful place. Namaste. 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. 🙏🏼