Object Lessons
Little Dharmas Everywhere
Hello, and welcome back to You Forgot I Was a Seed. Thanks for being patient, as I haven’t felt up to writing here in a minute. I’ve had a really stressful few months since my birthday, and I’ve been challenged a lot to hold on tight to my ethics and beliefs, even when it’s been hard or inconvenient. I think I’ve been avoiding this blog because I wanted to show up when I could offer a more concise take on what I’m currently going through, or wrap it all up in a nice bow and click send, and get that little dopamine hit of doing something perfectly. But that’s not real. That’s not the truth. The truth is I’m in active recovery from a lot of things, but in a broad sense I’m recovering from an addiction to suffering and grasping at control. It’s not some lovely, linear journey, it’s ugly af and I don’t often know what the next best step to take is. I want to share my thoughts with the world, and I want to share my writing, but I get SO wrapped up in my own head and I suffocate any flame of inspiration I might feel. I’ve had a perfectionism relapse the past couple months. It makes sense. I’ve been stressed and uncertain, and that makes me want to “fix” my life. But what I’m starting to realize is that it’s the very concept of “fixing” myself that is constantly getting me deeper in the mud. It’s not working. It has literally never worked, yet I devote so much of my life to fixing my perceived flaws: fix my body, fix my relationships, fix my art, my habits, my entire freaking life. I know that I feel my best when I allow myself to be ENOUGH, just the way I am. Two months ago, when I posted about my birthday, I truly felt all those things that I wrote. I still do, but it’s all mixed up in pain and confusion. I don’t feel like I’m enough right now, not deep down in my heart, where I want to feel it the most. I know it intellectually, and that’s what I’m rolling with these days. A year ago, I intellectually wanted to recover from my eating disorder, now I know with all my heart I will never go back. I have often had to fake it till I made it, and I have seen it work for me over and over again. I put my body through the motions and let my brain catch up.
I’ve started a new dharma class through the Asian Classics Institute (ACI) and it feels good to be putting my body through those motions. There is so much to learn, and something I love about yourself is that I’ve trained myself to recognize that and learn from anything. When people refer to the “Three Jewels” of Buddhism, they’re referring the the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. The Buddha is less about Siddhartha Gautama, the man who lived and died a long ass time ago, and more about the potential we all have, the fact that his mind wasn’t different from ours, the reality that we could reach enlightenment. Dharma is the teachings to get us there, not just in the scripture and commentaries written over the last 2,500 years, but anything that helps us wake up to our own Buddha-nature. And the Sangha is the community of people committed to walking that path towards awakening with you. We can’t really do it alone (as much as we want to, and as much as meditating alone in a cave for 12 years is romanticized) and our Sangha not only supports us, but gives us opportunities to support others (which is supporting ourselves AHHHHHGH!) and plant seeds of future goodness.
Something I’ve been thinking about:
In Tibetan the word dharma means the path, the teachings, etc. But it also means “any existing object” which is no random mistake, as Tibetan language is inextricable from Buddhist beliefs. It was created for that. I think it’s fascinating that Dharma has this double meaning because it implies that every existing object is actually an opportunity for waking up and learning something. In that view of the world, it works to see signs and symbols everywhere I look, which is something I rejected for a really long time. How selfish right? Like the universe put something right here in my way just for me?? But the more I study Buddhism, the more I realize that the fact that I can look at the exact same thing as someone else, and it can be imbued with some deep meaning to me, and be absolutely nothing to someone else and vice versa is literally just as magical as some benevolent sky god trying to communicate with me. I thought it was sky-god way or nothing, and I went deep down the Nihilism hole for many years.
That’s it. Nothing world-shaking happening over here. Just wanted to pop on and say hello and that if you’re reading this, drink your water. I love you.
Dylan