I have been seriously lost twice in my life.
The first time, I was in Macy’s after soon after the end of the Christmas season with my mother and my younger sister. I was a child. My sister was even more of a child. I somehow convinced my mother to allow me to take the escalator up to the book and toy store that was set up outside of Santa Land during the holiday season. She let me take my little sister with me. Unfortunately, when I got up there to the space where the book and toy store was, it was no more. It was a seasonal retail area that had been taken down. I did what any responsible and rational child would do, I walked with my sister to the bottom of the escalator and we stood together and waited. A number of security guards with walky-talkies stopped and asked me if we were lost and I emphatically said “NO”. I insisted, as a matter of fact, that my mother was going to come up that very same escalator momentarily. I wasn’t about to tell some stranger I was lost! My mother had shared with me a secret password that anyone who she had told to pick me up if I was ever expecting her and she couldn’t come and get me and told me never to go with anyone who didn’t know that password. None of these security guards were revealing the password. I wasn’t going to budge. I was going to grow old with my sister at the bottom of that escalator.
Eventually, a security guard who seemed to offer legitimate information regarding my mother came to us and I revealed that, in fact, we’d been waiting an awfully long time and perhaps we were lost after all. They took us to the security offices where my mother was waiting.
The second time, I was in a window-less room with some brilliant scholars. To make a long story short, they started shouting at one another. They were trying to determine, apparently during my scheduled 10-minute oral defense of my qualifying exams for my Ph.D, what exactly was Anthropology and, was I or was I not an Anthropologist. An hour and a half later, the topic of Anthropology remained undefined. They were able to agree that whatever the definition was, I wasn’t one—-I wasn’t an Anthropologist. I entered the windowless room an Anthropologist. I left not an Anthropologist. And, somewhere in that time and space I got lost. Really lost.
The first time I was lost I was physically lost. I became disconnected from the one person who connected me geographically between the space where I was and my home.
The second time I got lost, I was spiritually lost. I became disconnected from the one person who connected me to the time and space and experiences from before I was an Anthropologist to the time when I became an Anthropologist—myself.
In both experiences, I made it home. My sister was with me on both occasions. On the first occasion she remained with me steadfast and true. Never once did she fail to backup my story that we weren’t lost. She never cried and she kept complete confidence that I was in charge and making the right decisions. On the second occasion she remained with me steadfast and true. Never once did she believe I was lost. Instead, she created a different tale in which I was a shape changer and she suggested that my powerful ability to be good at so many things was threatening to many, but that I must remain true to my shape changing ways.
Whenever I feel destroyed, and, lately, this happens to be how I feel multiple times in despicable minutes that stretch through hours and days, I recall the times I was lost. In both situations I remained still, but the geography shifted around me in unpredictable ways. I knew where I was. I knew who I was. But, the space changed and the terminology shifted and people behaved in ways I didn’t expect that surprised and shocked me. In both situations I didn’t see how I was going to get back home. The day I became a not-Anthropologist I didn’t become something else. I just wasn’t.
In Buddhism, we practice non-attachment. It is very hard to practice this with our belongings and with the people and places we love. But, we can fantasize and pretend that we aren’t attached and even this pretending is helpful. Even for a few minutes in meditation we can experience a feeling of freedom and liberation from all this STUFF. What a relief! But, non-attachment to self is a tricky one. In 2006, His Holiness the Dalai Lama published a book titled, “How to See Yourself As You Really Are.” Almost every year since its publication I have attempted to read it. I don’t understand it. But, from my minimum understanding, what I get from this book is that I don’t exist. You don’t exist either.
As Chandrakirti said, “Yogis refute their own inherent existence.” (HH Dalai Lama, pg. 41)
Macy’s doesn’t exist, nor did the escalator and the fact that I thought that there was a book and toy store somewhere was a complete fabrication too. Anthropology doesn’t exist either. Those brilliant scholars and the room and the tables and the lack of light and air due to the windows that weren’t there even in my imagination—none of that exists either. These memories of mine are truly figments of time and are shaped and re-shaped by my current understanding and the choices I have made before, during and after.
“The fact that things change from moment to moment opens up the possibility for positive development. If situations did not change, they would forever retain their aspect of suffering. Once you realize things are always changing, if you are passing through a difficult period you can find comfort in knowing that the situation will not remain that way forever (HH Dalai Lama, pg. 212).”
As Buddha says in the Diamond Cutter Sutra (quoted by HH Dalai Lama, pg. 213):
View things compounded from causes
To be like twinkling stars, figments seen with an eye disease.
The flickering light of a butter-lamp, magical illusions,
Dew, bubbles, dreams, lightning, and clouds.
I have memorized the last line of this part of the sutra and I repeat it like a mantra when I feel destroyed and overwhelmed:
Dew, bubbles, dreams, lightning, and clouds.
Dew, bubbles, dreams, lighting, and clouds.
Dew, bubbles, dreams, lighting, and clouds.
Because, when I am in the thick of feeling destroyed and lost and like all hope has taken a one way travel ticket around the world without enough cash for a return flight, it is a little reminder—-it’s changing. It’s all changing right now. I don’t know what is changing or how or what things will feel like on the other side, but it won’t be like this.
I support this mantra with a brilliant memory that was facilitated by a counselor, Dave Stein, at a summer camp that I attended as a child. One night on a camp-out, he marched us all out into a dewy wet field and told us to lie down in the grass. Then, he told us to be quiet and listen and to feel everything—-the wet grass, the way that the air smelled, the moon and stars in the sky—EVERYTHING. And he said that we would never forget that moment. That was about 30-years ago. He was right. I haven’t forgotten it. The experience of shaking up the normal routine. The walk to the field in the dark. How magical and special it felt to be outside, late, with everyone there also listening so closely and feeling the wet grass poke into shorts and t-shirts and watching the sky move above us.
Dew, bubbles, dreams, lightning, and clouds.
Dew, bubbles, dreams, lightning, and clouds.
Written by Sharon Fennimore Rudyk, a rogue Anthropologist and yogini offering mind-body coaching services including yoga, meditation and visualization through online courses in mindfulness, Buddhist philosophy and meditation techniques and teacher training programs. Based in Pittsburgh, Sharon harnesses the power of the internet to bring her teachings to you wherever you are.
REFERENCE
His Holiness the Dalai Lama
How to See Yourself As You Really Are (2006), Atria Books
