Garuda in Check

Two isolated events took place yesterday that shook me up pretty good. Like getting check-mated in five moves. To protect the innocent I will take the standard editorial liberties and attempt to describe, inspect and resolve the situations, the circumstances and, eventually, my response to them.

One involves love and the other honor. Fire before smoke. 

After a totally sleepless night, feeling like the berry pie I had for dessert was loaded with ten truckloads of sugar, I ended up reading as the wind announced the arrival of rain and rain the arrival of the sunrise. I had turned to a book on contemporary Buddhism to ease the restless emotional stalemate that my dilemma had created. And while the chapter on mimicking the many positive traits of the legendary garuda seemed serendipitous and personal, it left me wanting a deeper catharsis and resolution enough to drift sleepward. I’ll fall back and explain.

Innocently and with as much sensitivity as I could muster, I inadvertently put a person whom I greatly admire in a complex position. By telling my truth I unwittingly transferred the responsibility of a response, a reply to that truth, their move, on my friend. In their silence, or in their counter, the issue would be elevated to another, all together different category. A category I hadn’t anticipated with my initial opening confession. But there it was, and here it is. Instead of assuming the hardship of saying nothing and keeping my emotions to myself, I felt that in sharing them we would both benefit from the advancement of truth. It is obvious to me now why chess has the rule stating that one cannot move into check. It is for self preservation, to keep the King alive for at least a little while longer (and allow him to make a successful counter move in a big-ass hurry!) You may, as I have, want to file this in the ‘when not to tell the truth’ file folder. A folder that contains precious few case studies. And rightfully and paradoxically so. 

in Lodro Rinzler’s fascination work, The Buddha Walks Into a Bar, we are reminded of the five skhandhas, or aggregates that comprise what we generally refer to as the ego, or self. They are, layered like onion skins;

Our physical form,

Our layers of feelings,

Our perceptions, 

Our mental formulations, and

Our consciousness that binds them all together. 

I am laying in my warm bed under the ceiling fan that is pushing the humid night air of waterside summer onto my chest. I am sweating although it is four in the morning. I try again to merge the wisdom of these words with the anxiousness and contempt I feel the words I used have caused another person, a dear friend whose only ‘crime’ is to have trusted me, to consider. To consider and then respond. To accept or reject. In descending order, my physical body is agitated and upset as the layers of feeling, my understanding of these complex, paradoxical and ironic (not to mention moral and ethical) assumptions, my perception of the frequency that we share, the bigger picture and the current situation in which we find ourselves and finally the take-away in pragmatic, objective reality as sculpted by our synchronized consciousness seeking a higher vibratory solution. More truth? Is it love? Is it wisdom born of knowledge and experience? Is it gratitude, forgiveness or grace? Is this a stop along the road to enlightenment or just another pot-hole on the highway to hell? 

I don’t know. 

The second issue is one of honor, of faith and of respect. All of which were violated in one simple, second-hand conversation. More ego involved, more miscommunication and more pain. It was relatively easy to let this one go as the source is under extreme duress and willing to do almost anything to win even the slightest ego battle, interestingly a battle where both sides are the same person. By seeing the relative unimportance of the detail as it matches with the bigger picture (go ahead and take the pawn so I can take your Queen), this is an opportunity to keep an altogether innocent third-party protected by the silence of maturity. Where maturity is wisdom and wisdom is the altruism of impermanence. Let it go. No big deal. This too shall pass. 

Unless you decide to escalate and up the ego ante. 

Check.