Making the Right Choice
- At May 02, 2020
- By drynick
- In Reflections
0
All these reflections on the transformational power of choosing can veer into an apology for an inflated sense of self-importance and control. We can slip into a sense of entitlement where we begin to think that if we’re clear enough and choose wisely, our lives will be smooth and pleasant. Or we take the good fortune of our current circumstances to be something that we have earned through our enlightened choices and hard work.
Here’s a true story that illustrates that our choices may not be as important as we think.
Many years ago, a friend introduced me to a new mountain bike trail loop. It was a lovely ride—five or six miles of winding trails through woods and pastures, over hills and through valleys. I rode the route with him two Saturdays in a row. The next week I decided to try it on my own.
Everything began fine—I remembered the familiar landmarks and enjoyed being my own company on the narrow forest paths. Then I reached a fork in the trail that I didn’t remember. Did we go left or right here? I couldn’t remember.
I was just a little nervous. But I paused, took a couple deep breaths and tuned in to my deeper intuition. Left felt like it was the right direction to go, so I took the left fork and rode on. Things soon looked familiar and I was at ease again. Until it happened again a second time. An unfamiliar fork in the trail. Again I was a little nervous, but found my inner equilibrium, trusted my intuition and rode on.
I was delighted and just a little proud of myself when I completed the loop back where my car was patiently waiting. Instead of panicking when I didn’t remember, I had paused, trusted, and found my way to some deeper kind of knowing. A good life lesson, I thought.
A week later, I rode the same trail again by myself. This time I decided to be adventurous. At the first fork, instead of going left, I went right. And to my surprise, after a short while, I was back on the same trail. At the next fork in the trail I did the same thing. Again, to my surprise and delight, this other fork also led back to the main trail.
I arrived back at my car that day with a revised sense of my own self-importance. It was not my deep powers of intuition that had served me, but rather the path itself that had taken care of me. The correct answer was both right and left. I realized that the only way I could have failed would have been not to choose.
I’m reminded of the wonderful adage ‘You can’t steer a parked car.’ When the car is motionless, playing with the steering wheel has no impact on the direction of the car. Sometimes, the most important thing is simply to get the car moving. Even if you are headed in the exact wrong direction, when the car is moving, you can eventually turn it in the direction you want.
Perhaps the choices we agonize over are not what they appear to be. Sometimes there is a clear choice, one option that ‘makes sense.’ But other times we have to make decisions without enough information, we can’t know how things will turn out. What if all our choices lead us back to the main trail? What if many choices are not a matter of right or wrong, but rather simply moving into the future? What if our lives are not just a matter of ‘getting it right?’
My teacher’s teacher, Zen Master Seung Sahn, once had a student come to him who was trying to decide whether to stay in the monastery or go back to graduate school. Seung Sahn listened patiently to his troubled listing of all the reasons to stay and all the reasons to go. Then Seung Sahn said in his pigeon English: ‘You got coin? Flip coin and do what coin says.’
Daily Practice: As you move through your day, be aware of some of the choices you are making. Notice when you feel the pressure to make the ‘right’ decision. What if all your choices led to your one true life? What if there is more freedom to choose than you think? Once or twice today, see what happens if you take the ‘other’ trail and choose to do something you don’t usually do. Notice what happens.
Choosing Ourselves
- At May 01, 2020
- By drynick
- In Reflections
- 0
This choosing is a subtle thing. We certainly don’t have the freedom to choose to do or be whatever we want. The liberation we talk about in Zen is not about being masters of the universe. We humans are fragile and limited creatures. And when we begin to pay attention, we can see that most of the important things that have happened to us in our lives have been partially or wholly caused by factors and synchronicities beyond our control.
A psychologist friend of mine once told me that the goal of therapy is to choose to be who you already are.
You might wish you were taller or shorter—wiser or less anxious. You might wish your parents had been different or that someone else had won the last presidential election. You might wish that you didn’t have to wear a mask and gloves when you went to the grocery store. Most of the universe is beyond our control. Everything that has happened in your life and in the universe has already happened. You cannot go back and change it. In this exact moment, you simply are who you are. No amount of wishing you were different or ‘things’ were different will change what is already here.
Byron Katie once wrote “When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100 percent of the time.” So perhaps the path to freedom and ease lies acceptance—in giving up our ancient argument with reality.
Ralph Waldo Emerson put it this way: “There is a time in every man’s [or woman’s] education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide, that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe if full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. (Self-Reliance)
Emerson speaks of self-acceptance–to take ourselves ‘for better, for worse’ as we are. Our ‘nourishment’, our freedom, comes from cultivating the ‘plot of ground’ which has been given to us. The plot of ground is you, exactly as you are, and the circumstances of your life, exactly as they are. In Zen sometimes we say that the precise situation of your life right now is just what you need to wake up. No need to wait for more favorable conditions or some other time. Right here. Right now. Everything you need is already present.
This is perhaps one of the most incomprehensible perspectives on life, that we, as we are, are enough and that this moment, whatever it is, contains everything we need. Most of us are firmly believers in the inadequacy ourselves and our circumstances. The billion dollar self-help industry is powered by this sense that we could and should be better than we are. The deeper truth of the self-help movement is that cultivation is required, but the real work required can only start from this basic ground of acceptance of what is already here. (This acceptance, of course, includes the acceptance of realizing that sometimes I just really wish things were different than they are.)
Ursula K. LeGuin had this to say about choice: “You thought, as a boy [or girl], that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought once. So did we all. And the truth is at as a man’s real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do.” (The Wizard of Earthsea)
Our essential choice is whether or not we align with what is already true. This truth is subtle and ever changing. It’s the truth of what is deepest in our hearts. It’s the truth of the current circumstances of the world around us, whether we ‘approve’ or not. As we slowly give up our ancient addiction to objection, we can begin to see what is really here and to work in skillful ways with ourselves and everything we encounter.
Daily Practice: Can you notice the objections as they arise within you today? Notice when you wish it were different or when things seem ‘wrong’ or when you don’t get your way. Can you just observe what it is like to object? No need to change or even analyze. The practice is not objecting to objection. Just observe and observe. Be curious about what is really going on.
Follow David!