Notes from Ben

 

I walked into a bookshop at Plum Village meditation centre in France on my first visit and, still convinced that consuming enough wise books and talks on CD paved the way to being a better person (rather than actually practicing things like mindfulness for example), I was ready to spend another 50 euros on whatever I could lay my hands on.

Browsing the shop I came across a postcard depicting a monk sitting quietly under a tree, and written across the top of the card was the slogan, ‘You Have Enough’.

“Wow! That’s trying to tell me something,” I thought, and left the shop without buying a thing. I’d already bought a few books about mindfulness the day before, and it struck me as true that yes, I already had enough!

Later that day I told one of the monks, “You have to take that card out of your shop, it’s going to put you out of business!”

I think it’s true to say that once we’ve got a few of the right things in place – a good home, good work, a healthy diet, good friends and family – then perhaps we really can say “I have enough” – I already have enough conditions to be happy with just what I’ve got.

Contrary to what I used to believe, I’ve realised that I don’t need to be a millionaire, or own lots of properties, or buy endless stuff, or run a big company, or visit every country on the planet…

I can happily say, I have enough.

(Feel free to print out my version of the card above, click on it to enlarge and download, stick it on the fridge!)

“What’s the goal of meditation?” I asked a zen teacher a few years ago.

“There is no goal!” he replied, which at the time sounded totally weird!

Why would anyone do anything without any measurable results? How would you know just how much you’d achieved?

Not having goals and non-doing is NOT something they drummed into us at my insanely competitive British private schools.

From the age of 9 I was positioned into a hierarchy of one of four classes per age group, the cleverest in class one, the ‘thickoids’ in class four, and within every class, and for every subject, we were positioned in a rank according to how well we did in endless tests, exams and homeworks.

Oh the greatness of being top of Class One! Oh the horrors of being bottom of Class Four!

By the time I left school at 18, I was a fully certified Striver, programmed to go further, do more, get richer and never stop. No wonder this ‘non-doing’, non-striving, mindfulness stuff was going to take so much practice!

While the ‘practice’ of mindfulness is still clearly the crux of the matter, one idea (from Thich Nhat Hanh) has really helped to keep the striving under control: “You are already what you want to be”.

“There is no need to put anything in front of us and run after it. We already have everything we are looking for, everything we want to become. All the elements for your happiness are already here. There is no need to run, strive, search, or struggle. Just be…” Thich Nhat Hanh

What? You mean I really am good enough already? I don’t have to strive and strive to change, to prove and improve myself all the time? Oh thank goodness!

“You are already what you want to be…” Really hearing this for the first time made me, the ex-British-schoolboy, the fully certified Striver, want to break down in tears from such a profound sense of relief and release.

My adult life so far looks like this:

After school, I went to Leeds university to study French

I changed to Philosophy

Then I went to London to be a photographer, which didn’t really work out

So I decided to go and live abroad for a while, and wrote to language academies in Paris, Madrid and Barcelona, about training to be an English teacher

Madrid answered first, saying, ‘you can start in 2 weeks’, so I did

I intended to move to the sea after that month’s training in Madrid

But they offered me a job in the same academy at the end of the course

Delighted, I stayed

Then I wanted to leave at the end of the first year and head for the sea again

But I met Marina (who is now my wife), so I stayed

And after a few more years teaching English I became a translator

Then started making websites

Until the one about learning Spanish turned into our job

We had a child

The Spanish website did better and better and now gives us time for other projects

Like thinking and writing about happiness and mindfulness and things like that…

And that’s how my adult life has unfolded so far from one moment to the next. How French led to Philosophy, and Philosophy led to Photography, and one month in Madrid has become 14 years. How not having a clue what to do with my life has turned into a wonderful life.

And yet, at almost any of the above stages I could have added ‘…and I worried madly about what to do next, until…’ …the next thing happened!

Almost every transition was fraught with indecision – and in particular, every seven years, by a major crisis! The transition from trying to be a photographer in London, to moving to Spain (aged 25), 7 years later from English teacher to starting to make a living from websites (aged 32), and 7 years later, only recently, from only thinking about our Spanish website business to “what else could I do now?”

Lots of worry and indecision, and big 7 year crises. But if I take them out of the story, and look at my adult life as the above list, I can see how well it has simply unfolded. There was no need for all that constant worry about ‘what to do with my life’, ‘what am I going to be’, ‘am I making the right decision’. All I had to do was move forward and see what happened next!

A French Zen Master named Thay Doji said this to me once during a meditation retreat in Spain. Detecting somehow that I was prone to hold life at arms length instead of standing upright in the present moment, he asked, “what are you afraid of?”

Remembering something he’d said, I replied parrot-fashion, “aren’t all our fears really fear of death?”

“Paaa!” he said, “You’re still young, you don’t have to think about that! Just stop worrying and let life unfold from one moment to the next!”

Ferns and grasses and trees and clouds and rivers unfold, nature unfolds without worrying about it. When my latest 7 year crisis hit, for the first time in my life I was able to sit back and think, “ah, here it is again!” and despite a reasonable share of indecision and fretting, this time I knew at last to embrace the crisis, and to wait and see, with great interest, what happens.

All I have to do is to put one foot in front of the other, acting on my intuition and interests, and life will gently unfold.

So as for the question, “How to stop worrying and let life unfold instead?” …the answer is simple:

1. Stop worrying (Embrace a crisis! Follow your interests! Take a step!)

2. Let life unfold from one moment to the next…

 

Every now and again my mother would come out with things like this. It’s an excerpt from an email to one of my sisters, which the same sister later read at my mother’s funeral service:

An email from Mum

“I promise you on my honour that I NEVER dwell on gloom, despite what you believe! As I sit here working, every flicker of light and shadow of the silver birch on the wall opposite the window gives me surges of intense pleasure.

The fact that people are dying, who may be relatives or friends, is to me an intrinsic part of “living”. The ‘tristesse’ – somehow a better word than sadness – that that creates intensifies the pleasures of being alive.

That probably sounds like sentimental rubbish to you, and I have expressed it clumsily, but perhaps you can understand what I feel.”

I came across this again the other day while clearing out some papers and it struck me with some force: there’s a whole lot of Buddhist philosophy in there! – Don’t dwell on the past but enjoy the wonders of the present moment – suffering is part of life – without suffering there cannot be happiness – And I’d never noticed any Buddhist Sutras on her bedside table!

“The kingdom of God is available to you in the here and the now… You don’t need to die in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. In fact, you have to be truly alive in order to do so.”~Thich Nhat Hanh

Watching the silver birch shadows on the wall, I think my mother understood that.

A friend of mine was about to move back to the States from Madrid when he discovered that his landlord had no intention of giving him back the 2,000 euro breakages deposit from his rented apartment.

They’d left the flat in perfect condition, but the landlord clearly hoped that since they were going to leave the country in 2 weeks, they’d have to just forget about the money.

What the landlord was doing amounted to theft, and instead of relaxing into their last few days in Spain, they had to rapidly initiate legal proceedings with a lawyer, and work out how to manage the legal process from the other side of the world.

“But you know,” said my friend over lunch, “what can you do? We’re just saying It is as it is and getting on with enjoying the rest of our time here.”

“Hey!” I said, “that’s my new favourite phrase, it is as it is!”

Chus, my wise Spanish doctor-friend, had introduced this to me recently – es como es in Spanish. It is as it is – whatever happens, happens. You can’t fight reality, because it’s just reality. Shunning it, fighting it, resisting what is in any way just leads to suffering.

Yesterday the water was cut off in our building meaning the loo was blocked and unwashed dishes filled the whole kitchen. My mother-in-law was in hospital for an operation, and my wife, as well as being stressed about all that, was rightfully cross with me for not giving her a hand with something just when she’d needed it earlier on.

I promised to take our son out to lunch, then to the park, to give her some time off. She needed the space, and we really didn’t need one more bit of stress.

So on my way to pick up our son, the car broke down.

That clearly was going to mean an afternoon with tow trucks and repair workshops and calls to the insurance, and no lunch out with my son… and no space for my wife.

I left the car by the side of the road, jumped in a cab, and rushed off to get my son from school.

“If the car breaks down, the car breaks down!” said the taxi driver, “no se puede ir en contra de la vida! – you can’t go against life!”

He knew it too! Why had it taken me so many years to find this out?

Whatever happens, just happens, it is as it is, and everything else is just resistance to reality.

“But,” Chus had pointed out to me when she first shared these few words of great wisdom, “that doesn’t mean you don’t care about anything anymore, you don’t just sit back and give up. You accept what happens and then make a choice about how to deal with things.” There’s our freedom, in how we choose to deal with what is.

My son and I got the taxi home for lunch. I spent the afternoon getting the car towed to the garage and dealing with the insurance, while my wife spent the rest of the day happily playing with our son. Her window of personal space had gone, but she chose to have a great time with him instead. “It doesn’t matter at all,” she told me later, “es como es! In the end I had a really happy afternoon”.

Es como es… It is as it is… I think you can apply it to anything that happens, and while the sky is still blue, and kids are still fun, and trees are still magnificent, you can always find ways to happiness.