Ty Phillips explains how right view, followed by right action, can steer us away from frustration—and get us out of the toilets we find ourselves in.
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My daughter breaks into a run, hand between her legs, “I gotta pee, daddy, I gotta pee!” Her speed matches her urgency. I hear the light switch click, the toilet seat go up, and I hear her feet dancing up and down as she does the pee pee dance that carries on even into the later life. I laugh to myself and then I hear it … splash splash.
I get up and run down the hall and there she is, all the way into the toilet. Feet sticking out, arms sticking out, and head sticking out, like a 1980’s Garbage Pail Kid. She looks over and smiles, “I playing mermaid, daddy!” I don’t know if I should laugh or sigh so instead, I do what any sane 2015 parent would do; I pull my phone out of my pocket and take a picture.
Pictures and laughs done, I open the hall closet and grab a package of wet wipes and a rag. I pull her out of the bowl, tushy dripping with toilet water, and gently shake her off while she giggles gleefully. Feet down on the towel, I break into the wipes and give her a wet wipe bath head to toe, a bath in anti-bacterial lotion has never seemed like such a good idea (for me and her).
Wrong view is part and parcel of the cause of our own suffering. We engage actions, creating effects, that eventually lead to compounded suffering, because our view is skewed.
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Ordeal done, I begin to think about the innocence of her thought, even though it was based in what Buddhists call, wrong view. Wrong view is part and parcel of the cause of our own suffering. We engage actions, creating effects, that eventually lead to compounded suffering, because our view is skewed.
One more pill will take the feeling of addiction away, but strengthens the root of addiction, one more sexual partner will fill the void of emptiness only fills the need of ego and does nothing to uproot the cause; one more shopping spree to get that feeling of gain yet now we are in debtors’ court, blaming the bank instead of our own impulsiveness.
Wrong view can seem innocent, and in fact, it is often how we learn, like a child saying titty when they mean kitty. We laugh, and no harm no foul. They eventually learn to enunciate and titty is a happy memory of a more innocent time. We now fret over school fights, teen pregnancies, and grades. Wrong view is the root of self perpetuating grief.
Brynn now knows that the toilet is dirty and she can’t get out once she has allowed herself to sink into the bottom, much like we cannot get out of the effect of actions we have committed without help … in walks right view. Just saying wrong view causes suffering is of little help if we don’t have a counter to it. We pause and acknowledge, “great, I’m stupid, now what?”
Right view is a process of knowledge put to good use; wisdom. We take the time to curb impulsive behavior and think through the consequences, the outcome, not for just ourselves, but through all involved.
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Right view is a process of knowledge put to good use; wisdom. We take the time to curb impulsive behavior and think through the consequences, the outcome, not for just ourselves, but through all involved. We often trip up by planning ahead for ourselves without giving any thought to our interactions with others, to our impact on the larger or smaller world around us. Right view followed by right action takes these all into account.
Learning to curb or at least direct our impulsive behavior is the separation between human and animal mind. It is sitting in a toilet full of pee vs. waiting patiently on the bathtub to fill so that we can play and remain urine free.
We often look at these steps in our life as laws of suppression. Things that keep us from doing just what we want. Doing what we want however, often leads down the road we didn’t want to take. The steps of right view and right action were never set down as laws, or diving dos and don’ts, but instead, were presented as, you might want to try this if you want to get out of the toilet you fell in.
We spend so much time engaging our desire for absolute control over our lives that we fail to see that it is ego that holds the reigns and not wisdom. We are drug along by impulse and complain all the way about being neglected, overlooked, or forced into the situation. We sit pouting, stuck in the toilet, refusing to see that no one put us there. It was our cries for personal expression. We chased me and mine and neglected we and us.
It is of course okay to make mistakes, it is how we learn. So while you are sitting in the pee, maybe take a minute to think about how you fell in, and why. Get up, wash off, dress up, and engage this new found knowledge, turning it into wisdom and applying it to our other encounters. A few minutes of observation can save us from a lifetime of frustration.
Photo: Frederic Bisson/Flickr