Don't Worry, Be Grumpy

  “No!” huffed her husband. “And don’t send me to that uncivilized, obnoxious, ill-mannered, toilet hole of a market ever again!”

  Now the secret of a lasting marriage is to know how to smooth the ruffled feathers of your partner when he or she has just had a nasty experience. So his wife comforted and caressed him until the thermometer inside his heart registered a safer temperature. Then she softly asked him what that young man looked like.

  Her husband screwed up his face and, between bouts of spitting indignation, gave a description of the young man.

  “Oh, him!” said his wife, concealing a chuckle. “He does the same to everyone. You see, when he was a child, he fell over and hit his head. He suffered permanent brain damage, and he’s been crazy like this ever since. Poor fellow, he couldn’t go to school, he couldn’t make any friends, he can’t find a job, nor will he ever marry a nice girl and have a family. The unfortunate young man is mad. He shouts abuse at anyone and everyone. Don’t take it personally.”

  After her husband heard that, his own indignation completely melted away. Now he felt compassion for the youth.

  His wife noticed the change of heart and said, “Darling, I still need those eggs. Would you mind . . . ?”

  “Sure, sweetheart,” said the husband and he returned to the marketplace.

  The young man saw him coming and shouted out, “Hey! Look who’s coming! Old Camel Face has returned with his bat breath! Hold your noses everyone—a pile of dog shit on legs has just oozed into our marketplace!”

  This time, the husband was not annoyed. He walked straight to the egg stall with the young man following him, hurling many an insult.

  “Don’t mind him,” said the lady selling the eggs. “He does this to everyone. He’s crazy. He had an accident when he was young.”

  “Yes, I know. Poor boy,” said the husband as he paid for the eggs.

  The young man followed the husband to the edge of the market, shouting ever-louder obscenities at him. But this time it never made the husband upset. Because he now knew that the young man was mad.

  When you understand this story, then the next time that someone calls you terrible names, or your partner gets angry at you, just assume that they have hit their head today and are suffering momentary brain damage. For in Buddhism, getting angry at others and insulting them is called “temporary insanity.”

  When you realize that the person getting angry at you is temporarily insane, you are able to respond with equanimity and even compassion: “You poor thing!”

  7. The Cracked Mug

  The death of a loved one changes our lives forever. Even the deaths of those we don’t know, such as the thousands who die in natural disasters, alters the way we think. Death is a fact of life, and when understood, it teaches us how to care.

  Many years ago in Thailand, my teacher, Ajahn Chah, raised his ceramic mug.

  “See this!” he told us. “It has a crack in it.”

  I looked closely at the mug but could see no crack.

  “The crack is invisible now,” Ajahn Chah continued, “but it’s there. One day someone will drop this mug, and the crack will appear and split my mug apart. That is its destiny.

  “But if my mug were made out of plastic,” explained my teacher, “then it would have no such destiny and no invisible crack. You could drop it, knock it, or even kick it, and it would not break. You could be heedless because it was unbreakable. But because my mug is fragile, for that reason you must care for it.

  “In the same way,” Ajahn Chah began to emphasize, “your body has a crack in it. The crack is invisible right now, but it is there. It is called your future death. One day there will be an accident, a disease, or old age; then the crack will appear and you will die. That is your destiny.

  “If your life lasted forever,” Ajahn Chah concluded, “if your life were unbreakable like a plastic mug, then you could be heedless. So it is precisely because our lives are fragile, because it is our destiny to die, that we must care.”

  Understanding that relationships are also fragile like a ceramic mug is why we must care for each other. Comprehending that happiness has a crack in it teaches us to never to take joy for granted. Realizing that our lives will one day break apart makes us see that each moment is precious.

  8. A Tale of Two Chicken Farmers

  Once, there were two chicken farmers. The first rose early in the morning, picked up a basket, and went into the henhouse to collect the produce from the night before. He proceeded to fill his basket with chicken shit, leaving the eggs on the ground to rot. He then brought the basket of chicken shit back into the house, where it made a very bad smell. His family was very upset with that stupid chicken farmer.

  The second chicken farmer picked up a basket and entered his henhouse also to collect the produce of the night before. But he filled his basket with eggs, leaving the chicken shit to rot in the shed. It would become valuable fertilizer later, but you don’t bring it into the house with you! Bringing only the eggs back home, he cooked a delicious omelette for his family and later sold the remaining eggs in the market for cash. His family was very pleased with that clever chicken farmer.

  The meaning of this parable is this. When you collect the produce of your past, what do you put in your basket and bring home with you? Are you one of those people who collect all the unpleasant experiences of today (or of your life) and bring them home with you: “Darling, I got pulled over for speeding today!” “Honey, the boss was really angry at me at work!” Or are you someone who leaves all those negative experiences in the past, where they belong, and only recollects the happy moments?

  Are you a shit collector or an egg collector?

  9. Your Photo Album

  Many people have a photo album. In it they keep memories of the happiest of times. There may be a photo of them playing by the beach when they were very young. There may be the picture with their proud parents at their graduation ceremony. There will be many shots of their wedding that captures their love at one of its highest points. And there will be holiday snapshots too.

  But you will never find in your album any photographs of miserable moments of your life. Absent is the photo of you outside the principal’s office at school. Missing is any photo of you studying hard late into the night for your exams. No one that I know has a picture of their divorce in their album, nor one of them in a hospital bed terribly sick, nor stuck in busy traffic on the way to work on a Monday morning! Such depressing shots never find their way into anyone’s photo album.

  Yet there is another photo album that we keep in our heads called our memory. In that album, we include so many negative photographs. There you find so many snapshots of insulting arguments, many pictures of the times when you were so badly let down, and several montages of the occasions where you were treated cruelly. There are surprisingly few photos in that album of happy moments.

  This is crazy!

  So let’s do a purge of the photo album in our head. Delete the uninspiring memories. Trash them. They do not belong in this album. In their place, put the same sort of memories that you have in a real photo album. Paste in the happiness of when you made up with your partner, when there was that unexpected moment of real kindness, or whenever the clouds parted and the sun shone with extraordinary beauty. Keep those photos in your memory. Then when you have a few spare moments, you will find yourself turning its pages with a smile, or even with laughter.

  10. Pressing “Delete”

  How do you delete the bad memories of the past?

  Returning from the morning almsround in Thailand many years ago, Ajahn Chah picked up a stick by the side of the path and asked, “How heavy is this stick?” Before anyone answered, Ajahn Chah threw the stick into the bushes and said, “A stick is only heavy when you hold it. When you throw it away, the heaviness is gone.”

  Adapting this principle, I suggested to my own students that we perform the “stick ceremony.” You write down on a piece of paper as many troublesome bad m
emories as you can recall. Then find a stick and wrap the piece of paper around one end of the stick, securing it with a rubber band or some tape. Next find a secluded place in the forest, hold the stick in your hand, and contemplate the weight of all those bad memories. When you are ready, with all the force that you can muster, throw that stick as far away as you can!

  To let go of bad memories, you first have to acknowledge them. They need to be honestly recollected. Hence, writing them down on paper. Next, some physical act or ceremony is required to give the letting go some force. Simply thinking “I will now let this all go” does not work. The steps of wrapping the paper around the stick, walking into the forest with the purpose of letting the bad stuff go, feeling the weight of the stick in your grasp, and then the moment of release when you chuck it all away as far as you can: all these steps reinforce the intention. They give it power. It works. You have pressed the delete button.

  Then someone complained that I was responsible for others making a mess in the forest. That I was encouraging environmental vandalism! So I adapted the strategy as follows:

  Write out all the bad memories on a piece of paper as before. They need to be brought to the surface before they can be deleted. Only this time use a special type of paper, the most appropriate material for shitty memories. Write them out on a roll of toilet paper. When you have finished with the writing, take it to your bathroom, place the paper with the stinky writing in the toilet bowl where it belongs, and then flush!

  11. Good? Bad? Who Knows?

  A long time ago a king was out hunting when he cut his finger. He summoned his doctor, who always accompanied him on the hunt, and the doctor put a bandage over the wound.

  “Is it going to be all right?” asked the king.

  “Good? Bad? Who knows?” replied the doctor, and they carried on hunting.

  By the time they had returned to the palace, the wound had become infected, and so the king summoned his doctor again. The doctor cleaned the wound, carefully applied some ointment, and then bandaged it.

  “Are you sure it’s going to be okay?” asked the king, becoming concerned.

  “Good? Bad? Who knows?” replied the doctor again. The king became worried.

  The king’s worry was confirmed when, in a few days, the finger was so badly infected that the doctor had to amputate it! The king was so furious with his incompetent doctor that he personally escorted him to the dungeon and threw him in a cell.

  “Well, Doctor, how do you like it, being in jail?”

  “Being in prison, Sire . . . Good? Bad? Who knows?” replied the doctor with a shrug of his shoulders.

  “You are insane as well as incompetent!” declared the king and departed.

  A few weeks later, when the wound had healed, the king was out hunting again. Chasing an animal, he became separated from the others and ended up lost in the forest. Wandering in the woods, he was captured by the indigenous forest people. It was their holy day, and they had found a sacrifice for their jungle god! They tied the king to a large tree, and their priest began chanting and dancing as the forest people sharpened the sacrificial knife. The priest took the blade and was about to cut the king’s throat when he shouted, “Stop! This man has only nine fingers. He is not perfect enough to sacrifice to our god. Set him free.”

  In a few days, the king found his way back to his palace and went straight to the dungeon to say thank you to the wise doctor.

  “I thought you were stupid saying all this ‘Good? Bad? Who knows?’ nonsense. Now I know you were right. Losing my finger was good. It saved my life. But it was bad of me to lock you in jail. I’m sorry.”

  “What do you mean, Sire? Had you not put me in jail, I would have been there with you on the hunt, and I would have been captured too. And I have all my fingers!”

  12. The Lost Taxi Driver

  A man told me that in 1977 he was returning from a business trip to the Indian city of Mumbai. The trip had gone well, and he had ordered a taxi to take him to the international airport in plenty of time to check in. However, the taxi got lost. The driver, even though he was a local, couldn’t find the way. As the minutes ticked by, the businessman was getting more and more concerned that he would miss his flight. He started getting angry at the taxi driver. The driver only got more confused.

  Soon, the businessman realized that his only hope of catching his flight would be if it were delayed, which was quite common in those days. But when they finally approached the airport, his last hope was dashed. He saw his plane taking off. For once, the flight departed on schedule.

  “You stupid taxi driver! You of all people should know the way to the airport. You should never again be allowed to drive taxis. You have made me miss my flight! You idiot!” shouted the businessman in a rage.

  Then he looked up and watched as the aircraft fell from the sky. It crashed, and all on board were killed.

  “You wonderful taxi driver! You are so wise. If only all taxi drivers were as clever as you. Please take a large tip!”

  That man told me that the experience had changed his whole life. He doesn’t get so angry anymore when things do not go according to plan. Instead, he notes, “Good? Bad? Who knows?”

  13. There Are No Criminals

  I received a phone call from an officer at a local prison. He wanted to speak to me personally to invite me to come back to his prison to teach. I replied that I was very busy now with many more duties than in the old days when I used to visit regularly. I promised that I would send another monk.

  “No!” he replied. “We want you.”

  “Why me?”

  “I have worked in prisons most of my life,” explained the guard, “and I have noticed something very unique with you. All of the prisoners who attended your classes never returned to jail once they were released. Please come back.”

  That is one of the compliments I treasure most. I thought about it afterward. What had I done that others hadn’t that had genuinely reformed those in jail? I figured out that it was because, in all my years teaching in prisons, I had never once seen a criminal.

  I have seen many people who had committed murder, but I have never seen a murderer. I have seen many people who had stolen from others, but I have never seen a thief. I have even seen people who had committed terrible sex crimes, but I have never seen a sex offender. I saw that the person was more than the crime.

  It is irrational to define people by one or two, or even several, horrific acts that they have done. It denies the existence of all the other deeds that they have performed, the many noble acts. I recognized those other deeds. I saw peoplewho had done a crime, not criminals.

  When I saw the people not the crimes, they also saw the good part of themselves. They began to have self-respect, without denying the crime. Their self-respect grew. When they left jail, they left for good.

  14. The Stigma of Mental Illness

  I told the above story at a conference on mental health a few years ago. One of the department heads at a prestigious mental health facility was very impressed. He invited me to “bless” his building.

  “What form of mental illness are you involved in?” I asked.

  “Schizophrenia,” he replied.

  “And how do you treat the schizophrenia?” I enquired.

  “Just like you explained in your presentation,” he responded. “I don’t treat the schizophrenia. I treat the other parts of the patients.”

  I raised my hands up in the Buddhist gesture of respect to him. He had understood.

  “What are the results?” I asked, even though I knew what the answer would be.

  “Brilliant! Much better than any other treatment,” he answered.

  When you call people schizophrenic, they are likely to live up to your label. You have stigmatized them. When you regard them as people who suffer episodes of schizophrenia, that they are more than their illness, then you give the healthy part a chance to grow.

  15. Permission to Die

  “Are you at peace wi
th your impending death?”

  I often say these words to people who are close to death. My aim is to convince them that it is okay to die, that there is nothing wrong with it. Then they can die with dignity and at peace.

  Many such people tell me that they have already made peace with their coming death. The problem, they say, is that their relatives and close friends will not let them go. “Mother, mother, please don’t die! Please get better. Please!” This becomes their greatest source of suffering.

  Steve was a young Buddhist in his thirties. He had a successful tour company that took his clients whitewater rafting in some of the most beautiful locations in the world. Unfortunately, he was dying of an incurable cancer.

  I had visited Steve and his wife, Jenny, many times and, honestly, was surprised that he hadn’t passed away yet. He was suffering. Why was he hanging on?

  I turned away from Steve, faced Jenny, and asked her, “Have you given Steve permission to die?”

  What followed was one of those tingling moments in life that you feel forever privileged to have watched. Without giving me a reply, Jenny crawled up upon the bed, put her arms tenderly around her frail and emaciated husband, and told the man she loved to bits, “Steve, I give you permission to die. It’s all right Steve. You can go.” They hugged and cried. Less than two days later, Steve was dead.

  Often I have to take aside the friends and relations of someone close to death and suggest that they give to the one they love so much one of love’s greatest gifts: permission to die. That gift of freedom may only be given in your own time and in your own way. It is the gift that finally sets your loved ones free.

  16. A Buddhist Joke

  A Buddhist monk received a call from a lay member of his temple.