Take a look at this picture. Everything is fabulous for this serene woman. The water is so crystal clear, the sand warm and inviting, possibly even a lovely breeze to keep her from overheating. There are no jellyfish or pieces of trash littered on the beach, no gritty sand particles getting under her bikini, and certainly sunburn is not going to happen. Life is great. Life is nothing but smiles and sunshine. Come what may, she will be unfazed.
Now bear with me. I couldn’t find a picture of what I was looking for exactly. But I believe that I can tie this one in. You should be able to follow where I’m going with this at least. I was searching for a picture with a Buddhist practitioner in a serene state (like this woman on the beach doing her yoga/meditation), but with a lot of chaos in the background. I saw something like this once, but unfortunately I am unable to find it. Lady on the beach it is.
The stereotype that I wish to examine is the preconception that if one is Buddhist, one is equipped with an arsenal to respond to all scenarios with a peaceful, calm bearing probably from some secret nugget of omniscience having been uncovered. If only this was true! It would certainly be pretty wonderful if such a thing was attainable. For all the stereotypes that could be, this is at least a very positive one.
Brad Warner, author of Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate, discusses multiple times that this vision of Buddhism just isn’t so. When his mother died, Warner shares personal insight revealing that even though he was a Zen follower and teacher, he still had to deal with the emotions that bubbled up:
I’m not going to pretend I just sailed through this thing all starry-eyed, going, ‘Life is death and death is life’ like some kind of cartoon Zen master. It was tough. But I’m glad to have had the practice I’ve had and the insights it’s given me into stuff like this because it helps. It really does. You never know what’s gonna come up in your life. When something big happens, like your mom dying, for example, you really don’t know how you’re going to react. This is why Zen guys do the practice of zazen. (47)
Practicing Buddhism won’t give you all the answers, but according to Warner it can aid you. On page 61, Warner reminds us that there are a lot of things that simply cannot be answered, but in Buddhism “I don’t know” will suffice. Despite this,
Zen practice can help you deal with disappointment by showing you that all of life is characterized by disappointment. Nothing ever lives up to your expectations, no matter what your expectations are. This doesn’t mean you’re never disappointed. I know I sure was. But you know that disappointment is just the action of your brain readjusting itself to reality after discovering things are not the way you thought they were. The best course of action when encountering disappointment is to know you now understand the situation better than you did before when all you had to go on was your thoughts. There’s no sense wallowing in sadness that you were mistaken. (75-76)
At the end of it all, the stereotype of obtaining an eternal numbness to all the bad feelings that occur in life is an unrealistic view, just wishful thinking. “[In] Zen we try to avoid these states of euphoria or bliss. The reason we avoid them is because they’re just as unbalanced as our so-called normal states of mind. Euphoria is the other side of terror. Just because you’re only paying attention to one side doesn’t mean you’re not getting both. True balance of body and mind is very comfortable and pleasant, but it’s not euphoric or blissful” (95).
