“Acceptance”

Squibs & Blurbs

by Jerry Zimmerman

TEANECK, NJ—(Weekly Hubris)—7/26/10—I am only now, in my sixty-third year, beginning to understand the Buddhist dictum of “acceptance.”

Not that I’m a Buddhist; nor have I ever seriously studied Buddhism. Yet I have often come in contact with many writings and aphorisms about Buddhist teaching in the course of my adult life. The whole smorgasbord of Buddhist ideas and impressions that have floated willy-nilly into my own personal space seems to have distilled themselves into one solid nugget: Acceptance.

If one is fortunate enough to live through many decades, it is obvious that life is made up of a multitude of waves: some up, some down, the good and the bad, the yin and the yang, the happiness and suffering that we all experience. If one is a sentient being of sufficient experience, it also becomes obvious that gadding about in euphoria during the good times and skulking under the bed during the bad times is a rather difficult, inefficient and often unsatisfactory method of . . . living.

So what, then? We are poor mortals, faced with the enormity of cosmic or godly decisions (take your choice), without much ability, if any, to change how they affect us. We seem to have only a couple of basic options if we don’t like the hand we happen to have been dealt: rail at the heavens or cry in our beer. I’ve done both with no discernible results.

Organically, I’ve come to the conclusion that I can do nothing. I should do nothing.

A really serious, concentrated, pro-active doing of nothing.

And that “nothing” is the key to a richer and more fulfilling life.

The idea of doing nothing is the same as acceptance and, in fact, IS acceptance, and acceptance is certainly not what I thought it was.

My life is like a mountain stream. I don’t know where it started, I don’t know where it’s going to end up, and I sure don’t know why the hell there is a stream here in the first place. It doesn’t matter what I think, because here, there, it goes, rushing, meandering, pooling, leaking, roaring, ever towards the bottom. It gets rained on, it goes through dry spells, animals drink it, debris falls into it. Day and night, it runs, through every season it is still there, rolling down the mountain.

It is just a stream. A wonderful, tangible thing and event, something right before your eyes that delights your ears and wets your feet and bounces moonlight into your face.

It is a complete mystery.

It is a complete mystery like your fingernails’ growing is a mystery, like your sadness is a mystery, like the freckled face of your lover is a mystery, like getting older is a mystery, like changing your mind is a mystery. (I could go on all day and so could you.)

Me, my life, is a mystery that I cannot decode, cannot figure out. But I can understand that I have a life and that I want to live it. I can work, learn an art, raise children, fix things in my house, laugh with friends, face despair, enjoy success, eat new foods, help someone, cry at weddings, cry at funerals, have conversations, kiss my grandchild.

No one wants pain, unhappiness, or failure. Yet, they will come. You should do “nothing” to make them go away. Pursue what you can do—you must stand straight and firm, be fluid when you move, keep your gaze clear, and take your best shots— exactly what you should be doing in the best of times.

You will be sad, aggrieved, confused and angry, but it will be YOU who is all these things. You cannot change these things, you must accept that it is necessary to be these things, but you must not be swept away by them. And know that these times will change again, as always, and you must guard against being swept away by the good times, too.

If the stream can simply remain wet and gurgling and moving downhill, let dirt and leaves fall into it, swirl around rocks and tree trunks, radiate in the sun’s rays and absorb the snow and sleet of winter, then the stream will be the stream that it always was and that it always will be, and what a marvelous mystery of a stream it is.