Your Greatest Treasures

When we think of the word treasure we think of Trump-like wealth, Smaug’s lair, or a buried trunk of pirate booty.

             But upon deeper reflection we realize our real treasure is our loved ones – our children, our spouses, our families, and our friends.

            Yet in the ancient Chinese book of wisdom called the Tao te Ching, Lao Tzu offers a very different definition of treasure. In chapter 67 he writes, “I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, and compassion. These are your greatest treasures.”

            How are simplicity, patience, and compassion our greatest treasures?

Simplicity

            With each passing day we take on more and more, adding, never subtracting – more property, more commitments, more obligations, more appointments, more expectations. It’s a wonder we can even breathe. The more buried we are under layers of adornment and intricacy, the further we are from our essence. We lose our center and live increasingly in the outer world of thoughts, forms, and accomplishments. All of this busyness sets up a screen through which we try to view the uncarved wholeness of the world. But everything grows cloudy, distant, removed. We end up isolated in a thicket of our own judgments and thoughts. The real world – the people we love, the essential core of life – recedes into the haze. This is the disease of over-thinking and over-complexity. Simplicity is the antidote. As Lao Tzu writes, “In the pursuit of knowledge, everyday something is added. In the practice of the Tao, everyday something is dropped.”

            In his longest speech, The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offered similar advice. “Do not worry about your life” he said, “what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable then they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”

            Simplicity then means simplicity in the outer world as well as simplicity in the inner world. “Simple in actions and in thoughts,” Lao Tzu writes, “you return to the source of being.”

Without lifting a finger we shift into awareness. As the Upanishads of ancient India proclaim, Thou art That – we are already one with the sacred essence of all things. No seeking, no struggle. We have only to grow still enough to allow the realization of unity to rise up from where it is hidden beneath all of our complexes. In this sense then, less definitely is more. The advice Henry David Thoreau offered for hikers in his 1857 journal was no doubt meant in a much broader sense – “The rule is to carry as little as possible.”

Patience

            If the first treasure is simplicity, then the second treasure is patience. “Patient with both friends and enemies,” Lao Tzu wrote, “you accord with the way things are.” How does patience put us into accord with the way things are?

            Patience is the virtue of accepting what is. Impatience generates anxiety, suffering, and conflict. Patience generates serenity, joy, and peace. Impatience says no, patience says yes.

            In Vedanta philosophy we often hear the word renunciation. It means relinquishing the illusion of control and coming out of ego-demands and into the consciousness of surrender. Renunciation is the path to awakening and enlightenment. In Buddhist teachings the focus is on non-attachment. Dropping our endless list of cravings and complaints we finally arrive fully alive in this now moment able to experience the depth of our own loving interconnectedness with all that is.

As the contemporary Zen Buddhist teacher John Tarrant puts it, suffering is the phrase “Not this,” while enlightenment is the phrase, “What is this?” The first stance is full of judgment and resistance, the second open-hearted and appreciative.

            Patience then is Lao Tzu’s word for that state of serenity wherein one is content in the present moment, no longer caught by the snare of craving something else. When you are free of expectations, the pace at which things unfold is exactly the right pace.

            And he’s specific about where we are to apply the virtue of patience – toward our friends and enemies. We all know that it is in the realm of human relationships that our serenity is most sorely tested.

            What if instead of silently demanding that everyone conform to our arbitrary expectations, we set them free to be who they are? Why are we so quick to demand our own freedom, and so reluctant to grant theirs? Let others drive the way they’re going to drive. It really is none of our business. Go around.

            This is especially challenging when it comes to our enemies. But in Jesus famous words, “love your enemies,” we hear an even deeper truth – there are no such things as enemies. There are only other people suffering like us, working with incomplete information like us, clouded by storms of chaotic emotions like us, trying to make their way and sometimes saying horrible things and acting in confusingly destructive ways, like us. The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said it best when he wrote, “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

            In chapter 15 of the Tao te Ching Lao Tzu writes, “Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear?” Patience means leaving the universe enough room to provide you with solutions, mercies, and healings you did not foresee and could not create on your own. In chapter 64 he writes, “Rushing into action you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion you ruin what was almost ripe.”

Compassion

            The third treasure is compassion. Lao Tzu wrote, “Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.” How does self-compassion lead to universal reconciliation? It’s simple. If you cannot experience love, mercy, and forgiveness for yourself, how do you think you can offer these gifts to another? When you learn how to better love yourself, your love for others grows clear, pure, and genuinely nurturing. Still, how does this reconcile all beings in the world? Many of us already understand this: our spiritual awakening is our greatest contribution to world peace. It is through our spiritual growth that the whole world is healed. If one person shows up awake, everything shifts. Imagine if ten of us do, or a hundred, or a hundred thousand?

            Taoism avoids intricate ideology, elaborate doctrine, and complex ritual. Also missing is a specific list of prohibitions or exhortations. Instead, Lao Tzu simply draws us toward what the Zen Buddhists call our “Original Self.” Coming out of our busy minds and into our cores, we know what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and why. We just feel it. That’s how great treasures work.

We're Always Teaching

[A version of this piece originally appeared in my "A to Zen" column in the November/December 2015 issue of Unity Magazine, and is reproduced here by permission.]

I remember as a child paying very close attention to my parents, especially when they didn’t think I was. I’d hear them talking in another room. Their words might not have been clear, but I could feel exactly what they were saying.

I’d see their faces fall when bad news came. I’d watch the way they moved around obstacles, or got stuck in the mud of their own worst ideas.

When they took a bold risk, I’d see them draw deep from unseen reserves. When the money was tight, and it almost always was, I’d hear the fear in their voices. I’d see them shed ten years and the weight of the world whenever we camped in the Sierras. To this day, pine trees smell like freedom and grace.

I’d hear my dad breathing hard, leaning against his shovel as he dug a hole for a fruit tree. Then keep digging. I’d see my mom take her lifelong love of sewing and turn it into a business, making dresses for perfumed ladies in Cadillacs. I’d see exuberance pour out of my father’s eyes when he played a Scott Joplin rag on the piano in the living room. I’d see her quiet focus and creativity as my mom turned root vegetables into yet another no-recipe pot of homemade soup. Every Sunday afternoon I’d see my dad on the patio in our backyard with a portable typewriter on his lap, clicking away on double onion skins with carbon paper in between, long letters to both sets of parents back in the Netherlands. On weekdays I’d see my mom’s mood lift as three o’clock rolled around – dad would be getting home from work any minute. I’d watch the smile spread across his face as she kissed him at the door, not every day, but often enough. I’d feel their love and respect for each other as they shared a daily cup of afternoon tea.

I saw all of this when they didn’t think I was watching.

            We think we have the biggest impact on our kids when we make earnest speeches, but most of what our kids learn from us happens all around the edges of our careful lesson plans and ardent moralizing. They study us when we’re busy, caught up in the dance of our own lives, unaware that we’re being watched. As parents, who we are is so much more important than what we say.

            How do you handle adversity? Do you crumble at the slightest incline in the road? When things go wrong, do you look for someone to blame? Or do you simply get to work? When we bear down on our problems, we teach our children about the immeasurable freedom released in the exertion of discipline and resolve. And by simply deciding to work around obstacles, we demonstrate the power of thought. A problem becomes a challenge, a challenge an opportunity, an opportunity a solution, and a solution an unforeseen blessing. By simply re-clothing the events of our life in new thought, we turn scarcity into abundance.

            But explanations of these insights simply won’t do. We must embody them, model them, and prove their worth in the daily trials of our lives. Only then will our children come to mirror and embody these values for themselves.

            How do you treat the waiter when he gets the order wrong? How do you negotiate a dispute with your neighbor about who should pay for the tree service or the fence construction? How well do you weather criticism from a supervisor or a sibling? How do you react when the cat throws up on the rug, again?

            What do you spend your money on? How do you spend your time? What are the topics of your idle chatter? We know this – you spend your time, money, and energy on things you value. Your values are on glaring, continual display. Any child can see them.

            As Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” And our children are always watching.

Before the Fall

I think a lot about aging and dying these days. No, nothing happened. I’m fine. It just hits you sometimes – we don’t have forever.

            If you’re paying attention at all you can’t help but notice – everything moves around us like a comet. Events, people, problems, and gifts sling in out of deep space, loom into view, come so close we can touch them, then slip through our grasp to recede into the darkness beyond all reckoning. The trick is not to think about it too much. Just stay present to what’s right in front of us. Pay attention. It all goes by so fast.

Rehearsing Death

            After Socrates was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by the Athenian court, he awaited his execution in prison. His friend Crito came to see him. Crito considered himself well-connected, and presented Socrates with a proposition. I have the guard bribed, he said, the warden bribed, and a sailboat is awaiting you in the harbor. But Socrates refused to escape. He considered it an admission of guilt, and immoral besides. As a devoted Athenian citizen and decorated war hero who’d benefited from Athenian citizenship his whole life, he argued that it’s irrational to obey laws in your own interest while breaking laws against your interest. If we do that, he said, we violate the very concept of law and regress into naked self-interest. But there was an even deeper reason Socrates refused to escape.

As his friends gathered around him in the final hours, their grief was profound. They loved their old philosopher friend, a virtuous and charismatic teacher who exemplified for a generation of Athenians the courageous and noble pursuit of wisdom. As Socrates lifted the cup of hemlock to his lips they wept. Yet he remained calm, good-natured even. How, they asked, can you be so accepting of this horrible fate? He turned to his friends and said, the philosopher rehearses his own death. In other words, if you really love wisdom, and if you’re really honest, then you have to admit that none of us knows what death is. How can we be afraid of something we cannot conceive? Fear has no place in authentic wisdom, Socrates taught. And then there’s this – what if being dead is better than being alive? I mean, we don’t really know do we? So living in fear of death is the height of folly.

What does it really mean to rehearse one’s death?

“Rehearse,” from the Old French rehercier, originally meant “to go over again” or “repeat,” or literally “to rake over,” and “turn over,” as in turning over the soil for planting. Rehearsing one’s death then means to face it again and again, engage with it, work with it, prepare for it, learn it, and turn it into a productive field of insight. 

Rehearsing our death means practicing deep acceptance of the transitory nature of all things. To everyday let go of everything you love, to live each day as if it were your last, and to embrace your loved ones as if you were about to be forever parted. There is no time for half-hearted commitment. Only whole-hearted will do. This, for Socrates, was the examined life – the only life worth living.

            By not rehearsing our death, we live in an illusion, falling prey to all manner of distortions. We slip into the illusion that we are a permanent, isolated identity. We fall into the illusion that our current belief system is true, pitting us in eternal conflict with all other perspectives. We dangerously ascribe to all sorts of tribalisms, nationalisms, and other deleterious parochial maladies. We trade in our vulnerable humanity for false security. But in the light of wisdom we realize the fluidity of the self, the poverty of group-think, and the provisional nature of all truth claims. We grow willing to relinquish our illusions in exchange for full membership in the loving community of consciousness that transcends self, ideology, tribe, ethnicity, and nation.

Over Our Shoulder

            In Carlos Castaneda’s wonderful, controversial account of his apprenticeship with the Yaqui shaman Don Juan, death played a prominent role. Don Juan taught Castaneda that our death is always present, lurking just over our left shoulder. Knowing he is always there, like a good friend, we acclimate to his close proximity. We get used to him always being around. His nearness frees us from the pettiness of our lives. We get better at letting the little things go. With death as a constant companion, our priorities shift, our values clarify, and our courage tempers into steel. We quickly drop perceived slights (since there is no more ego to defend), and move instead into the consciousness of forgiveness and gratitude. Every moment becomes a shining, singular miracle – a gift of infinite grace. In the words of the Jewish mystic Abraham Joshua Heschel, the world becomes “bereft of triteness.” Banality transforms into significance. Boredom becomes impossible.

            But if you are unwilling to make friends with your own death – your own fluidity, your own impermanence – you close yourself off from its gifts. You sentence yourself to a life of illusory self-importance, confusion, suffering, and disappointment. The fullness of the beauty of the world eludes you, the grandeur of human creativity evades your grasp, and the delirious depth of love remains only a rumor, not a lived experience. Our death is always hovering nearby, trying to cajole us into our own best lives. But we keep running away, pretending he isn’t there.

Before The Fall

            This, after all, is the source of all our pathologies – we think we have forever. We think there is always time. That tomorrow exists. But it doesn’t. Not really. It exists only as an idea in our heads. It’s not real. There is always only this now moment. And in the eternal present, all is well – every fear unfounded, every longing met, every question mollified.

            Instead, we idolize the past. Some of us live in the illusion that everything used to be better, and long to return to the good old days. We obsess about our looks and spend thousands of dollars on skin treatments, hair color, cosmetics, and even surgery to turn back the clock, mistakenly thinking that if we could be anywhere other than here, anytime other than now, anyone other than who we really are, we’d be happy. What a torturous pursuit.

            Sure, blame the culture. Blame the cosmetics industry. Blame the media. Blame advertising. Blame corporations. Blame Photoshop. But they are just a mirror held up to our own fear, and our belligerent unwillingness to make nice with our old friend death.

            Summer’s winding down and soon the leaves will turn brown and red and gold. They’ll fall in spirals to gather in drifts, clattering down the street in the autumn wind. The days will grow shorter, the nights colder. Winter is coming. We love the changes. But we fear them too. Because we know we only have so many autumns left, so many winters. What if this is our last summer, our last hot day? If we knew it was our last, would we waste it complaining? Would we label it a hardship? Or would our hearts open laughing to delight in its embrace? It’s never too late to awaken to the truth and renounce the illusion of permanence. It’s never too late to really, fully come alive. All you have to do is rehearse your death, and receive its gifts. All you have to do is know, really know in your bones, that this is it.