I Saw Suffering Yesterday

[daka]

I saw suffering yesterday
When I descended the mountain
I wasn't trying to.
In the bus
In the train
On the streets
In the cars
In the trucks
In the faces
Of the people.
Mr. Anxiety
Ms. Boredom
Mrs. Impatience
Mr. Lonely
Doña Depression
Sr. Haste
Don Angry
Ms. Miserable
Pedro Pain
Carmen Cripple
I saw few
Faces full of bliss
I lie, I think!
Why?
Not even one!
The closest was
A few seemingly
Peaceful minds,
Ordinary happiness.
If I did see bliss
I would have remembered
Because
But I was very happy
My mind was at peace
Full of compassion
And love
For all these suffering souls
Who knew not
That they were suffering.
I was wrong about the lying!!!
I do remember now,
Maybe two or three
Of the hundreds
Were exquisitely happy
The man in the customer service office
At the train station,
A very old woman,
Well past her due date
And me
We had a moment or two
How could I forget
Holy moments
In such a day?

daka

[Steven]

And for those that took notice of you, what would they likely have seen?

[lazariuk]

And for those that took notice of you, what would they likely have seen?

That is an interesting question Steven. I was once on a long bus ride and tried to hold to the awareness that what people are seeing is actually in their heads and that for everyone who looked my way for a while I was in their heads as a guest and so for as long as I could hold that awareness I tried to to be spread out wide as an enjoyable peaceful experience. I might have actually been an enjoyable experience as it felt good to get out of myself for a while.

I wonder if Daka will tell you that they saw someone looking at suffering.

[Steven]

Hi Jack,

That was an interesting bus ride. Sometimes it feels that we're all guests of one
another on our rides. As you were "spread out wide as an enjoyable peaceful
experience," I question whether you were really getting out of yourself, though.
Maybe it was more of both an expansion of, and connection with, a more peaceful
aspect of yourself.

[daka]

And for those that took notice of you, what would they likely have seen?

That is an interesting question Steven. I was once on a long bus ride and tried to hold to the awareness that what people are seeing is actually in their heads and that for everyone who looked my way for a while I was in their heads as a guest and so for as long as I could hold that awareness I tried to to be spread out wide as an enjoyable peaceful experience. I might have actually been an enjoyable experience as it felt good to get out of myself for a while.

I wonder if Daka will tell you that they saw someone looking at suffering.

It is a very good question, Steven. I asked myself that question and others during that eight-hour marathon swim through the ocean of humanity.

My mind was remarkably calm and peaceful. The definition I use for 'happiness' is simply a calm and peaceful mind, so I was also observing my 'happy' mind. This mind was also constantly experiencing compassion, which is the desire for others to be free from their suffering.

I know that people enjoy being smiled at. I could do nothing for the merely imagined or imputed suffering that was not even confirmed, other than smile when eye contact was made with them, as a gift. I think they saw a peaceful guy with an appropriately slight smile on his face. I doubt that they saw someone eavesdropping on their rumbling. suffering mind like a peeping Tom, or making judgments. In the past they may have seen such a person. For the few people who met me with joy and wide-openness my smile and my heart grew to meet theirs. Unfortunately so few people even made eye contact that my experience was one of being very alone, or 'out of contact' (which I am very used to) during those eight hours, with the exception of the few momentary encounters with the few genuinely joyful people.

When I arrived in Murcia, my destination, I awoke in the flat of a friend and a gentleman (the owner of the flat, a stranger to me) arrived with a tradesman to do some electrical work, which he oversaw. Pablo engaged me in rich deep authentic contact for two hours steady, in Spanish. Out of the Blue!!! Feast or famine!

This experience was new for me. The understandings were not new but the experience of these understandings was new, and I attribute this directly to Jack' s (and Martin Buber's) insistent encouragement to experience authentic 'contact' with others. As Jack pointed out ...

it felt good to get out of myself for a while.

I lost it and found it and lost it and found it.... let's see what the day brings!

Thanks for the question, it starts my day on a good note, now on to some challenges!

daka

[Martine]

I know that people enjoy being smiled at.

I don't.

I wouldn't like to be sat opposite someone (a stranger) that kept smiling.
It would make me feel uncomfortable.
Very.
It's different if you know someone ~ then by all means give a little wave and a smile and pass the time of day.
But, it's a bit strange to go around smiling at people that you've never set eyes on before.

Where I come from you'd get smacked around the chops for it.

[Steven]

Hi Martine,

Yes, smiling at others (or eye contact, standing too close, etc.) can
be intrusive and can make them feel uncomfortable.

[Steven]

Hi Daka,

Where would anyone be without "authentic contact?" (Sanghas, friends, strangers...)

[daka]

I know that people enjoy being smiled at.

I don't.

I wouldn't like to be sat opposite someone (a stranger) that kept smiling.
It would make me feel uncomfortable.
Very.
It's different if you know someone ~ then by all means give a little wave and a smile and pass the time of day.
But, it's a bit strange to go around smiling at people that you've never set eyes on before.

Where I come from you'd get smacked around the chops for it.

Hi Martine

You are right about it being a delicate issue and culture-sensitive. I too would react to an over-the-top intrusive exaggerated smile, out of the blue. I think it is enjoyed when there is some authenticity and subtlety. I am not a smiley person, this is new territory for me, this experimentation, so I have been quite careful, I hope, and subtle. I think above when responding to a question from Steven wondering what the people saw, I guessed or imagined:

I think they saw a peaceful guy with an appropriately slight smile on his face

It started with simply being available for eye contact with everybody, making a little and responding to the response, carefully. A couple of people out of the hundreds beat me to the punch with a wave of apparently spontaneous blissful delight, and I tried to respond in kind, authentically.

I think the basis for that kind of authentic contact is pre-smile, it is the attitude that wishes simply to acknowledge the existence of the other person. There is a word that I love in the English language, "reification":
reification
n 1: regarding something abstract as a material thing [syn: hypostatization,
hypostatisation]
2: representing a human being as a physical thing deprived of
personal qualities or individuality; "according to Marx,
treating labor as a commodity exemplified the reification
of the individual" [syn: depersonalization, depersonalisation]

I think the second part of the definition applies to this discussion, the depersonalization; I know that I have done this to people, pathologically, and I have felt it from people a lot, and it doesn't feel very good.
My experience is that people generally wouldn't even know if you smiled at them because they are very focussed on this reification process and their habit is to avoid contact. Even that imagined indignant reaction to the inappropriate smile seems like something to value when compared to the depersonalization that usually is going on. I sometimes feel like a mannequin robot gliding down the sidewalk. And if I am not consciously available for another kind of contact I think I am making others feel like that.

Today I experimented more with people in shops, on the street etc. I discovered that a few times I was able to stop that reification process, with a smile, with a soft heart. Also, the next stage was that the person's new state of presence, aliveness, joy, ignited a bit more in my mind, and maybe a bit more bounced back at them. It felt something like a lucky streak in a pinball game. (very quick!).

I think Jack has been pointing at this different type of contact for a long time. I think many of my teachers are experts and show this example. Although I have known these things intellectually for many years I have not done any significant work on the real life application until the last few weeks, and especially in my traveling during the last few days.

My practice has been too much in my head, (intellectual), and not enough in the heart.

I have "miles to drive"

(I hope I get pretty skilled at this before I arrive in England in May!)

daka

[Steven]

Hi Daka,

I thought of Martine's observation today at the gym and I was careful not to smile
when I was in the men's locker room. I guess I couldn't help myself on the workout
floor, because there was an exchange of smiles with a women there, then some
small talk. No, I wasn't hitting on her.

Re: "attitude," I've found setting the following intention to be helpful: "May I
see others with kind/soft eyes." Don't tell anyone; it'll ruin my tough guy image.

[daka]

Hi Daka,

I thought of Martine's observation today at the gym and I was careful not to smile
when I was in the men's locker room. I guess I couldn't help myself on the workout
floor, because there was an exchange of smiles with a women there, then some
small talk. No, I wasn't hitting on her.

Re: "attitude," I've found setting the following intention to be helpful: "May I
see others with kind/soft eyes." Don't tell anyone; it'll ruin my tough guy image.

It just dawned on me
Like a sacred realization
Good God, it's Sunday!

That's a lovely intention,
Steven,
Much better stated
Than mine
About the smile
But it all starts
With the heart
As my brother Tom in Toronto
A skilled therapist
Said to me yesterday
Through cyberspace:
"..a soft heart
is essential
to my well being,
more than ever
for some reason"

I awoke with blessings
and a poem:

Good for God and Buber
Though their dead
Blessing us
With holy moments
Of humor
In this Orange thread.
Whether God is
A ridiculous concept
Or not?
Is the question
I believe!
I am a Buddhist atheist,
A terminally lapsed Catholic
But at this point
I have to say:
'I think not'
(tongue in cheek as usual)

You in the gym
Me in the Spanish streets
And stores,
In training
Next we're of to Jolly England
For a mini-marathon
If they don't beat us silly,
If we have some teeth left
And we can still smile
It's off to Belfast city
Where we test the longer mile

daka

PS
I know this is not the God thread
And it is not the Orange thread
It is a Suffering thread
Threads just seems to stick to me
As threads tend to do
Might be harder to erase than I thought

[daka]

I don't know if people might have heard the expression (Maybe there was a book or movie way back with the title, "God Rides a Harley"? When I lived in Toronto in my pre-Buddhist unholy hedonist days I rode a big loud Harley-Davidson for years. In 2002 when I visited my second ex-wife in Toronto (she finally put her knives away and we have many happy holy moments), her present partner, a very nice guy kindly offered me a ride on his Harley, and this photo opp manifested. I send it (hopefully it will work this time) for comic relief.

(Normally you will offer your wife to someone before your Harley, so I felt very honored!... and relieved!)

Beware, Brits! That guy smiling at you is a "Biker"

daka

[Cate]

Well Daka - You definitely have me smiling today.

smiling
If you were not in your robes and you made eye contact with me and smiled at me my response would be - a partial smile back and quickly dropped eyes.
If you were sitting beside me however and spoke to me, dropped eyes and all, I very well might have a conversation with you. It would depend on my comfort level.