Orange County Buddhist Church
Orange County Buddhist Church
A WAY OF SEEING (Mind)
“During a visit to a
mental facility, a visitor asked the director what the criterion was that
defined whether or not a patient should be institutionalized.
“’Well,’ the doctor said, ‘we fill up a bathtub, then offer a
teaspoon, a teacup, and a bucket and ask the patient to empty the bathtub.’
“’Oh, I understand,’ the visitor said. ‘A normal person
would use the bucket because it is the biggest.’
“’No,’ the director responded. ‘A normal person would just
pull the plug out of the tub.’”
(Quoted by
George Yoshinaga in his column, Horse’s Mouth, in the Rafu Shimpo.)
How many of you saw the answer coming before you actually read it? I didn’t. I guess that makes me other than normal. Is that what you thought anyway? LOL.
I subtitled this, “Mind,” because the above joke plays with the mind and, at the same time, shows an aspect of the mind that most of us probably do not want to recognize in ourselves. That aspect is the strong tendency for us to cling, or to become attached, to things, whether it is a physical thing or a “mental” thing (not necessarily a figment of the imagination, but simply a non-physical thing, something we cannot touch, see, smell, taste, or hear.) I was going to include the sixth sense that the Buddha Dharma counts, i.e., think about, but it might be out of context here.
If you did not cling to the apparent choices given above (teaspoon, teacup, bucket), it would not be a joke, which is what it was meant to be. You probably would have been wondering why it was quoted. Actually, that might have been good: that you would wonder what the words meant. They are being used here simply to illustrate our (my) tendency to become attached to whatever we (I) think about. Sometimes, maybe even often, I have a hard time letting go of a thought, or a train of thought; and I do not think I am alone in this. It probably sounds as though I am hinting or saying that this is not a good thing. In fact, I am saying that, but it is, like nearly everything, not always the case. You no doubt have read or heard stories about scientists who were so wrapped up in their projects that they could not even sleep or eat. When they finally went to sleep, presumably from exhaustion, they would wake up with the answer. From our way of seeing, what happened is that s/he was able to let go and, in her/his sleep, assume another point of view, which enabled the person to come up with the solution.
How many of us have a hard time letting go of our anger? I am one of those people who are quick to anger and quick to forget. Usually. Sometimes, though, the thought of whatever it was that made me angry just stays and stays, like a slow-acting poison. I had to get that in, because I want you to get used to thinking of anger/hatred as a poison. Recall if you will the Three Poisons: greed/insatiable desire, anger/hatred, and ignorance/ unwillingness to accept true reality.
In one of the earliest written Buddhist texts, the Dhammapada, or, in Sanskrit, Dharmapada, which might be translated, verses on the Buddha Dharma, the first one speaks immediately of the mind. There are a number of translations, but they all point at the same reality: all that we are is the result of what we have thought.
Please set aside some time at least once a day to give thought to the Buddha Dharma and, most importantly, your life.
Gasshō,
Donkon Jaan
Rev. John Doami
February 2008
