A Lesson on Patience and Equanimity
Summary: You can learn many lessons from simple observation and contemplation. Here is an important one from a barking zen master.
One day, when I sat down to practice meditation in the main hall, my dog sat at his favorite spot, the main door of the house, facing the road. He kept barking at anything that moved outside and annoyed him. Sometimes, it was a bird or a chipmunk, sometimes a car, and sometimes neighbors going on their regular walk. In his little world, the dog was probably trying to protect me from all those perceived threats, but for me, it was a constant source of disturbance. In the beginning, the barks tested my patience and caused me a lot of upset. All my attempts to keep him quiet failed. Since I had a soft corner for him, I did not want to assert myself or show him that I was the alpha.
One day, as I was getting angrier by the minute for his constant barking, I realized in a moment of déjà vu that I was overlooking a great blessing and an opportunity to practice restraint. The dog was indeed opening a door for me to control my thoughts, impulses, and habitual reactions. Was that not why I was supposed to practice meditation and equanimity? I was looking for knowledge in high places, ignoring the ground reality and the lessons that I could learn from my natural surroundings and mundane experiences. The dog, who was probably a friend or even a teacher in my past birth, was obviously trying to teach me an important lesson, and I, in my eagerness to perfect my practice, was ignoring it. In that instant, I realized that the dog was helping me as a Zen master or a Buddha monk would and teaching me the virtues of patience, detachment, tolerance, and acceptance. Our major problem is that we always want to control people and situations. The wise ones let go of that control, the urge to better things, and accept them as they are. It is what we call making peace.
For me, the bark had a cryptic message. The dog was not the source of my annoyance or disturbance. I was the cause and the effect, and I was the problem. I was vulnerable to disturbance and lacked equanimity, control, and concentration. I was disturbed because of my likes and dislikes, expectations, and my desire to be in control. I expected the dog to act in a certain way and help me in my meditation rather than letting go of that expectation and surrendering to the situation. Truly, the Buddha in the dog awakened me to an important realization. Embrace life as it happens and be in the moment with awareness, understanding, compassion, and equanimity.