It was one of my early retreats, 2012 perhaps, and Mae Yo started playing a game some of you ‘old timers’ might know: How are those birds related? The set-up is simple; imagine you look up and see 2 birds flying in the sky. Explain how they are related.
I heard this and I thought, “this is sorta idiotic”. I mean who cares how the birds are related? Sure, sure I know the punch-line before we even start the game (because if you hangout with KPYers for a bit you’ll catch-on that it’s always about impermanence and/or suffering); the relationship between the birds is impermanent, which in this case means it is not just what we initially think, but some huge number of possibilities. But this isn’t a real-life situation. No one would play a game this simple. What’s the point? Isn’t there some ‘real Dharma’ we can be learning? Still, like a good student, I played:
Folks start calling-out how the birds might be related and a list goes up on the board:
- The birds can be lovers/spouses
- The birds can be a parent and child
- The birds can be friends
- The birds can be enemies
- The birds can be travel companions
- One bird could be teaching the other bird
- One bird could be hunting the other bird
- The birds could be leader/follower
- The birds could be siblings
- The birds could be be strangers going in the same direction
- The birds may have no relationship at all, we just see them for a single moment flying in one space
The list went on…The conclusion was just what I thought it was at the start of the game. Our assumptions about this world are based on one view, one belief, one perspective –ours. Reality is there are many possibilities, many perspectives. I get it already…moving on to the next big idea…
But once I went home from that retreat, I noticed that I had started playing games like this in my head when I had a few minutes to myself. I would look out at situations in the world, the way two people interacted, the meaning of words in a language I couldn’t understand, the possible outcomes for a game or an interaction and I would start listing –what could it be? I watched, I gathered evidence, I noted when I guessed correctly and when incorrectly (when that information was available). I played. I let my mind imagine and I checked myself.
One day I get a letter in the mail slot of my house, flip-it over and see it was addressed to someone else. In that instant I realized something had changed in my heart because I noticed I wasn’t surprised* to be getting a letter for a stranger. Sure, sometimes I get letters for other folks, its a normal everyday event, but it always surprised me a little bit. After all, I expected that the letters in my mailbox were for me, when they weren’t it was surprising — an exception to the rule. The rule is permanent, the exception is a corner case, not something I need to worry about, not proof that my basic assumption about letters in boxes is wrong…But all that practice, all that play, it had helped me start seeing possibilities. I had begun, in small everyday ways, to train my mind to see the impermanence that is always there, to not just write-off the corner cases, to not ignore the evidence. This was the first time I really recognized that my Dharma practice wasn’t just solving my big problems, it was reshaping my habits of thinking, my expectations about how everyday stuff happens in the world.
This story may seem small, may seem trivial. After all, where is the suffering of thinking 2 birds always relate in one way? What’s the suffering of thinking letters in my mailbox are for me? But imagine a similar situation — I see my husband at a cafe with another woman (2 birds) and I believe it can only mean one thing (lovers), what’s the suffering in that? If I believe that an invitation to a friends’ outing should be coming to me only to find it addressed to someone else, where is the suffering in that? If I believe every mole is cancer? Every dentist appointment will hurt? Every fat person will die young, where is the suffering there?
The thing about impermanence is we all already know it’s real; we know the conclusion before we even start the game. I sure thought I did — Yah, yah, old punchline, yipee, moving on… But, knowing abstractly and really believing in my heart are two different things. Believing only comes from my gathering the evidence, training to look for it, making note of when I am right and wrong. If I really already knew impermanence ruled this world, it would be game over, I would have no fear, no surprise, no disappointment, I would be enlightened already.
I offer you, Dear Reader, this story so you know my practice isn’t all heavy doomy and gloomy all the time. Sometime I just play, I let my natural curiosity guide me, I re-explore the world I think I know so well, I note when things are not the way I thought. I use the technique I will call “Gathering Evidence” — making mental (and sometimes written) note of the many possibilities that exist in the world, the huge number of possible futures, possible meanings, possible perspectives — so I can learn to believe in impermanence, not just ‘yah yah’ it and move on. And when I have a real problem, when life gets heavy, I can turn back to the technique of gathering evidence, which I have been practicing all along, to show myself how so many times this world isn’t really how I imagine it to be/ will be at all.
* A note about being surprised: Just like anger or fear or annoyance, surprise is one of those warning lights we have a wrong view of permanence. We are surprised because we believe we already know what will happen, what is normal, what the rule is. When something else happens, something other than our expectation we are surprised. If we deeply understood anything can happen, that the world operates by its own laws (karma and impermanence) not by our expectations, we would not have any surprise in our hearts.