Orange County Buddhist Church
Orange County Buddhist Church
A Way of Seeing (Expectations)
Every year around this time, I check the news to see how the job market is. Of course, it’s not that I am looking for a job, but I do hope (should I say “pray?” lol) that there are plenty of jobs available for the people who are graduating from college, trade school, high school or whatever other forms of education there are, although it is not strictly for graduates that I hope.
For several years now, I have heard of too many young people who have graduated from whatever institution only to find that there are no appropriate jobs available. It might be that they have majored in a subject for which there are very few jobs to begin with or for which an advanced degree is required, whether so they can teach the subject or so they can do the work they are being trained for, in which cases they should have known it was required. However, the lack of jobs that have been prominent in the news has been in those fields that should have had an abundance of openings, such as computer-related jobs. We now know that the bubble burst in those fields, but who could have known four years before they graduated that the demand would be halved or even worse.
Expectations sometimes, maybe even often, do not come to fruition. There are many reasons, or, as we Buddhists would say, causes and conditions, for a situation to be realized, whether that situation be positive or negative. Often, we do not know, are unable to know, what causes and conditions are relevant, or pertinent, to its fruition. Since all things, including causes and conditions, are impermanent, things might change when we least expect them to and we are sorely disappointed, even at times devastated, because an expected job did not come about or, perhaps, because a loved one died unexpectedly.
It is at such times we come to know how much or how little we have incorporated the teachings of the Buddhas into our being.
Think about it.
Gassho,
Donkon Jaan
Rev. John Doami
