BoomerGirl Diary

BoomerGirl.com was conceived and is managed by a woman named Cathy Hamilton.

Cathy specializes in writing about the little things most folks either don’t notice or try to pretend aren’t there, the slip-ups and confusions and occasional moments of grace that fall beneath the radar screen of the official ways we think of ourselves. A while back, when ice was everywhere, she had a terrific piece about trying to keep her dignity and her balance in an icy parking lot — of course she managed to keep neither, although she did manage not to fall down completely. You can find her piece here.

Most of us don’t like to talk about stuff like that — or even admit it to ourselves — because people might make fun of us, they might feel sorry for us, we might lose their respect, they might think we’re silly or clumsy or stupid.

I.e., they might not approve of us! So writers like Cathy do all of us a great service. They are telling us: it’s okay, you’re okay, we’re all human.

We’re human, so we’re not perfect. We’re not our idealized image of ourselves.

Thinking of this, my mind moved from little infelicities to the big things, the giant screw-ups. We’ve all done them — you can’t get through a week of parenting without doing something that might cause your kid to go into therapy later. If you think you know someone who’s never screwed up, this just means that you don’t know them well enough.

Which brought to mind something that I’ve run into at some Zen temples: “All my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate and delusion, born through body, speech and mind I now fully avow.”

The first time I ran into this, I was expecting the final word to be “repent.” Aren’t we supposed to repent twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion? But how can we repent it if we don’t fully avow it first? And if we don’t keep avowing it, we might think we’re done, finished. We might think: hey, I’ve repented, I’m good. There’s nothing more to do.

Not so.

The analysis in this chant of how we get into trouble is classic Buddhism 101, but it also transcends any particular religion. “Greed, hate and delusion” is sometimes translated as “desire, anger and ignorance,” and some version of this is found in any analysis of why people go wrong. We want what we don’t have or don’t want what we have — in Judaism; the phrase is “go after our heart and our eyes which lead us astray.” Not having what we want or having what we don’t want gets us irritated and we find ourselves kicking the cat or yelling at the kids; sometimes we really hold this hatred and anger and can’t let go of it, wrecking our lives and the lives of everyone around us. And we do all of this because we don’t know our true nature and where we fit into the universe — in theistic language, we haven’t opened our hearts to God and we don’t know (or accept) God’s will for us.

Somehow I find it liberating to fully avow all this. Trying to pretend that everything is rosy and that I can be perfect is exhausting. It’s like walking on ice: it’s exhausting to try to walk as if nothing is the matter; only when we’re willing to clomp and slide and even crawl if necessary can we get from one point to the other without totally fraying our nerves. Avowing our twisted karma allows us to deal with it, face it head on, and maybe even change it.