Love Dharma. Geri Larkin
Allison, who always struck me as being a natural-born leader. A young, athletic-bodied woman, she made decisions quickly and easily, didn’t take criticisms personally, and took on the toughest assignments with something that looked suspiciously like eagerness. Much of the time, her assignments kept her away from her husband day and night, for weeks at a time.
One day I asked her how her husband dealt with her absences. I knew the track record for marriages of female management consultants wasn’t good. Earlier that morning I had sat in on a managers’ meeting and noted that, while all the men were married, all the women, except Allison, were single. Most of us had been married but weren’t anymore. One of the younger women—bright and beautiful just so you know—had never been in a long-term relationship. And there was Allison. So I was curious.
She told me her husband was completely supportive of her work. They had a real partnership, she said. When I asked how this was possible, she responded that it had to do with ho they met. Three years earlier, overweight, she had decided to ride a bike across the country, east to west, as her way of slimming down. Along the way she met her husband. Although he didn’t need to lose weight, he was also riding a bike cross-country. For the first few states she didn’t like him at all, but it was safer to be with another person. Plus, her energy and effort were going into the biking.
By the second batch of states they were friends, working hard together, still concentrating on the bikes. By Colorado she was in love. When they hit California he asked her to marry him. What brought them together was their shared energetic effort. It was a surprise aphrodisiac. Physically putting all of themselves into the trip was just plain sexy.
I see it all the time at retreats. People who might never notice one another on the street or in a different environment are working side by side. Maybe it’s scrubbing floors or sanding them. Maybe it’s composting or building stupas together. Whatever the task, the energy put into it has a way of transforming interactions. People fall in love. Allison stayed in love because she continued to put the bike ride energy into her marriage. So when she and her husband were together, they focused on each other and usually did something athletic together, like hike, climb, or ride. And they remembered how much they cared about each other: enough to give each other the space of work independence.
There is something quite wonderful about putting lots of energy into the known aspects of our lives: “I spent the entire work period every day at an exercise session. . . . I did back bends and stretches while changing the linen; I twisted my body rhythmically to sweep floors; I hung sequentially from each vertebra in my back to scour the toilet; I squeezed the Windex bottle with all five fingers, alternating my hands to wash the windows. I breathed fully and deeply to set a rhythm for my body movements. After a few weeks of this activity I was exhilarated and bursting with energy.” 7
Virya, energy, is just plain appealing. In this place a person’s movements are beautiful, like a spontaneous dance. And there is an authenticity, an openness, almost a vulnerability, about these moments that feeds relationships, because one partner isn’t being needy or judging. Instead, she is simply doing what she is doing and no more. But also no less.
Buddha’s women followers gave relationships everything they had. They heard him literally and were clearly good students. Their energy never lessened, not when they were hungry or tired, not when they were thirsty or sick. It didn’t let up when they were crowded together in small huts during the rainy season or when they made protocol mistakes.
This is the energy that feeds relationships. It tells the person we love that he or she matters to us. One of the few pieces of advice I listened to when I was married, and one that served me well, was that I should treat every day like it was the last one we would have together, to pretend that I would never see my husband again. This advice came from one of my dharma brothers, a man who lives in Mexico City, where there is so much person-to-person crime that, too often, couples really don’t see each other again after they kiss good-bye in the morning. It was useful advice. It reminded me to pay attention, told me to take the time to put on clean clothes and wash my hair even when I was only going to see a handful of little kids that day. Virya is the energy that helps us to hear the family stories for the hundredth time with fresh ears and genuine smiles. In my case, virya energy reminded me not to take anything for granted. While other aspects of our marriage eventually deteriorated, energetic effort kept our sexual relationship exciting, spunky, and interesting, without the need for whips and chains.
Virya paramita means slogging through the valleys that happen in any intimate relationship. If you were raised on Cinderella like me, it may not even occur to you that there will be valleys in a relationship. But there always are. Energetic effort provides the booster shot that keeps us going through the reality of love until we can establish higher ground.
May I Practice Meditation and Attain Concentration and Oneness to Serve All Beings
A psychologist once told me that relationships depend far more on who we are than on whom we choose. I’m sure this is true. One of the problems we face in relationships is that we think we know who we are when we don’t. Before I started meditating I thought of myself as calm, kind, patient, and informal. Also humorous. If you had asked me what I brought to my relationship I would have listed those attributes. Then an eye twitch, two actually, drove me to meditation. Sitting in a quiet meditation hall, trying my best to quietly breath in and out, I got the surprise of my life. My thoughts weren’t kind and I wasn’t calm. I fretted, complained, and ranted all the way through my first few years (yup, years) of meditating. To this day I have no idea why I thought I was calm. And intense, thy name is moi.
One of Buddhism’s most famous Zen masters, Dogen, taught that studying Buddhism means studying ourselves first. That’s what Buddha’s women disciples did. And it is what you and I do when we sit quietly, allowing our minds to show us who we really are, what we’re really like. Happily, having a sense of humor was pretty accurate. But I’ve had to learn to stop worrying so much. If he’s late, it doesn’t mean he’s dead or has run into his ex-wife. And I’m calmer, which means that
I actually hear the end of sentences. Patience is slowly showing its face, and kindness . . . okay, kindness has always been there.
The point is that we need to really know what we’re bringing into a relationship or situation and whom we’re bringing into it. As long as I was portraying myself as calm and patient, when I was neither, I was setting up my partner. He expected something that didn’t exist. It must have been like trying to have a relationship with a full-body mask—an impossible undertaking. When I didn’t have a clear picture of myself I shot miscues into the air all day. When I asked a friend, “When will I see you again?” and he answered, “Sometime next week,” he assumed that was a perfectly fine answer, given my calm “Okay.” What he didn’t know was that I had instantly kicked into analysis paralysis trying to figure out all the secret meanings and messages behind his casual response. Happily, meditating caused huge shifts in my behavior—for the better.
If I’m unsure about a response I ask for clarification, for concrete responses. “Oh, by Friday I’ll hear from you? Perfect.” The difference in my interactions with people is enormous.
May I Gain Wisdom and Be Able to Give the Benefit of My Wisdom to Others
Prajna is wisdom, about seeing into the heart of a situation. This is not a wisdom of intelligence but of clarity. When we get rid of some of the murkiness in our brains—the opinions, fears, and melodrama—clarity shows up. And when we bring that clarity or prajna into our relationships, we know intuitively what needs doing. We know what will protect and build a relationship that feeds us and what actions and thinking will create the least harm should we leave a relationship.
Prajna protects compassion. Master Dogen taught that there are really four wisdoms: generosity, or giving without expecting anything in return; loving words; goodwill; and identifying with whatever the other person is going through. When all four are introduced into a relationship, whatever the situation, things get better. This does not necessarily mean that the relationship survives. It may mean going out on our own because we know that we deserve a relationship that offers a partnership of respected equals.
When I was first falling