What Happened Yesterday, Continued: What are you Talking About?

I was planning on going to a Buddha class last night in New Paltz until the phone-upgrade incident (post below) side-tracked me for an hour making me miss the class – but anyway I picked up my one Buddha book again yesterday and the day before, and thinking about going to class had me reminiscing a bit about the Buddha place in Brooklyn.

Once, the teacher asked us to identify some great source of distraction for us that keeps our minds frantic. One woman said “food.” And the teacher thought she meant the “I want treats” version of food, and we talked about that stuff, about craving and searching for something that we hope will make us happy, and how treats provide a goal to work toward that makes us feel happy. I assumed, however, that what the woman meant was the struggle to get and pay for food as part of the overall problem of survival, that the fear of dying cold, broke, starving, alone, and in pain was the main source of distraction for her mind. I think that’s what she meant. That’s what I wanted the teacher to talk about.

Another time the teacher asked what kind of fears we have. I wanted to say “dying cold, broke, starving, alone, and in pain,” but someone else beat me with a different question. This student said “not fulfilling my potential.” And the teacher picked this up and went with it, and it was pretty interesting and everything, but I also wanted to ask this student what she meant – what is “potential” and how would we “fulfill” it? Does she mean creating a great work? Fame, success, adulation, the execution of some nagging vision? I’m assuming the teacher probably talked about fulfilling our potential for compassion, love, and happiness, but I kind of think this lady was talking about being super rad in some vaguely powerful, socially recognizable, basically magazine-cover kind of way, and she was afraid she’d die without feeling like she really got it done in a way that satisfied her sense of self or ego or whatever. I assumed this because she was super tall, super pretty, definitely over 35, and not famous.

Isn’t it silly that I thought people were saying something different from what the teacher interpreted two different times? And silly that I imparted to the first lady my own ideas/fears, and imparted to the the second lady a pretty shallow personality (which maybe also was probably most likely um basically related to my own fears and insecurities and sometimes desire for recognition that I wanted the teacher to address)? Anyway everything really is only our heads. We hear what we want. I think the teacher was doing this too with the first lady, since he sometimes references treats as a weakness, and talks about getting older and chubbier and how it strikes at his vanity, and also has jars of jam and little chocolates on his shrine. We all have our own things.