Last weekend I received some devastating news. I don’t much care to post about it here, but suffice it to say that my family and I were reminded that the human mind is a tragic, complicated, terrifying place. Hearts and lives are broken.
I’ve been trying to take care of myself, despite my inability to sleep for a few nights after hearing the news. My self-care process is a combination of crying when the mood strikes overwhelms, distracting myself with editing work & old episodes of Veronica Mars, going to yoga with one of my favorite teachers on the planet, and trying to allow each sensation of grief to arise, abide, and dissolve in its time.
In Buddhism, we believe in a person’s basic goodness, their Buddha-nature or bodhicitta. Especially in the wake of tragedy, when recognizing bodhicitta can be especially difficult, it’s important to remember that all beings everywhere are fundamentally good. The karmas that lead to the events that transpired…well, they can’t be qualified by the lives in which they manifest. All we can do is perpetuate compassion and try to avoid giving rise to more non-virtuous karma, more suffering, by hardening our hearts to the reality of our painfully human condition.
So I’ve been reading “Missed Connections” on Craigslist. What could MC possibly have to do with recognizing bodhicitta and coping with loss, you ask? It’s no secret that I take a healthy dose of dharma cues from my time on NYC subways, and MC reminds me that my fellow subterranean passengers are searching just like me, seeking each other out for connections and meaning and heart-mind vibrations. I feel like our culture has become so preoccupied with maintaining our steely facades, we’ve forgotten how to take action when our Buddha-nature starts to hum and our heart-mind reaches, reaches, reaches to connect with someone. MC is a forum for slightly delayed reactions to this very human yearning, and as sappy as it may sound, it gives me hope. If we could all find a way to recognize our sameness — our beautiful, perfect bodhicitta — we might not feel so alone. We might have the courage to turn to each other instead of retreating to a place where we can’t be reached, where we deny our essential nature and reject the Buddha within.
Fair warning: There are a lot of not-so-noble, lust-driven, casual-encounter-esque posts on MC. But if diamonds were easy to find, they wouldn’t be so valuable…right? See some of my favorite posts from the NYC site this week, or find your city’s Missed Connections page here.
