The western world emphasizes competence, individualism, productivity, and aligning life in accordance with our desires. The starting point of Buddhism is that our efforts to control in these ways are a source of suffering and separation.
The mythical story of the Buddha is that he lived a protected life. One day he went outside the palace walls and encountered “divine messengers” that were to change his destiny. The first three messengers were the old man, the sick man, and the corpse, which taught him the shocking truths of old age, illness, and death; the fourth was a wandering ascetic, who revealed to him the existence of a path whereby all suffering can be fully transcended.
Many of us ignore these messengers and focus instead on working on relationships, developing a career, and aligning the world to meet our desires and feeling safe. The messengers seem to be pointing to a time far off in the future. But the reality is that we are fragile, vulnerable creatures. At any moment we can lose our health, our job, our partner, or our good friends. When we experience or are vividly aware that loss is inevitable, vulnerability changes the way we live.
Frank Ostaseski, co-founder of the Zen Hospice Project, describes vulnerability as a porous opening into the richness of the grief and beauty in this world. When our heart is broken open, there is a deep connection to love and care. This openness allows us to act with sensitivity and gentleness. How might we say goodbye to a friend or a partner, if we are mindful that it may be the last time we will see them?
In the Bahiya Sutta, the Buddha gives Bahiya these instructions. “Herein, Bahiya, you should train yourself thus: ‘In the seen will be merely what is seen; in the heard will be merely what is heard; in the sensed will be merely what is sensed; in the cognized will be merely what is cognized.’ In this way you should train yourself, Bahiya.” The Buddha then tells Bahiya that when you practice like this, there will be no one separate from the experience.
This is what a Zen Master called “True Love:” no subject, no object, no separation. Each action of body, heart, and mind is our life. It is not an abstraction of an imagined future or past. It is our direct experience, now. By bringing both wisdom and compassion to life, we open to the richness of this world without an overlay of judgments and commentary. This is our practice, to open to our life as it is, in this very moment, and to realize that we are something vast.