Rant

I've been aspiring to write a series of posts on Pema Chodron's teachings on Shantideva's Way of the Bodhisattva, and well, just haven't found the energy and focus to really get started. But the energy and focus found me. Yesterday I came face to face with a teaching. Yesterday I found myself in the thick of a rant. The rant came after a work-related phone call with another professional. I remained (mostly) polite over the phone, save for a moment or two of sarcasm. When I got off the phone, I realized I was sweating. The anger got internalized, and then in a couple conversations afterwards, it came right out in a self-righteous, beleaguered, insulted, pissed-off rant. With hand gestures. And dramatic vocal range. Now there's some energy and focus. What force could possibly knock Jomon from her equinimitous (is that a word?) Ango practice of Right Speech?

4.27

I am as if benumbed by sorcery,

My mind reduced to total impotence

With no perception of the madness overwhelming me.

O what is it that has me in its grip?

Insurance companies. The minions of Mara.

Dealing with insurance companies is, for me, such a reliable, predictable trigger into fervent righteous angry victim mode, that it is familiar, becoming tiresome even, and still I seem to be able to only helplessly watch it arise. My best intervention has been to just try to avoid interacting with them, though this is not entirely possible. And I'm coming at it from the provider side of things; not even an ill person in need of benefits. I can know this is a danger zone for me, and believe I am about to use my skills to navigate sanely through it this time, and then the next thing you know, I'm Corky St. Clair in "Waiting for Guffman:"

Nobody ever plans to be Corky St. Clair:

6.24

Never thinking, "Now I will be angry."

People are impulsively caught up in anger.

Irritation, likewise comes --

Though never plans to be experienced!

All of it gives me a chance to see where the little velcro hooks are in me that get caught here every time. Certainly I harbor some opinions and views about how health care SHOULD be delivered, but boy howdy, isn't. In fact, this rant always ends the same way, with a soliloquy about the collective cost to a nation of all these bean counters on each side fighting over the same $20 bill in the no man's land of paperwork trench warfare, blah blah blah...

As I've said before, I'm a cheap date when it comes to righteousness (it does have an addictive quality), and I like to be right, and I don't like to not-know. Very strengthening of this ego, this self -- to have some evil empire to bump up against, generate emotion about, and verify all this selfing.

For whatever reason, I also get stuck in the roles in these conversations. I take them too seriously. I fail to see the larger picture. I hold my professional role too tightly, and I also see a them on the phone, something like one of the Borg in a big heartless, faceless corporation.

Indeed there may be some place for righteous anger, perhaps as fuel to change conditions that are oppressive. Nevertheless, Shantideva recommends patience as an antidote to anger. Certainly needed if there is to be change in this system, otherwise burnout will come fast and hard, and what good is that to anyone?

6.2

No evil is there similar to anger,

No austerity to be compared with patience.

Steep yourself, therefore, in patience--

In all ways, urgently, with zeal.

Pema Chodron and Shantideva also talk about three sources of patience:

1. Reframing our attitude toward discomfort,
2. Understanding the complexity of any situation,
3. Developing tolerance.

But here is the kicker:

6.107

So like a treasure found at home,

Enriching me without fatigue,

All enemies are helpers in my bodhisattva work

And therefore they should be a joy to me.

*Sigh*

This bodhisattva work is tough stuff.