Ritual

In the shadow of the monuments to striving,

the market greets another morning.

Open to life in balance, 

with the coming and goings of it's world

We often have dreams of being able to do what we want to do. Perhaps we will win those millions that will give us the freedom to thumb our noses at the world's tedious demands. We work toward that promotion which we expect will give us more responsibility and authority, but also we hope, more autonomy. We long to be free of the burdens of our committed relationships. So we abandon our family for that free spirit we met at work or on-line or at the conference; that person who promises to be our soul mate, that person who, like us, just wants to be free.

But those who have pursued those freedoms soon realize that freedom costs. The millions change our relationships with our family and friends—and rarely for the better. The promotion takes us further away from the work that feeds our sense of competence and moves us into arenas where political acumen is valued more than job knowledge. With time the passion we felt in our new relationship fades and we discover that, just as with our previous partner, our new soul mate has habits and ways of being that we find challenging.  So despite ourselves we can’t seem to help being drawn to another whose newness again sparks our desire.

For the Buddhist scholar, David Loy, these dreams and needs of ours for money, for success and for undying romantic love are associated with the ideal, dominant in Western culture, that individuals have the right to make themselves happy.  When neither money nor success creates happiness, and romantic passions fade, the result is a sense of lack[1]. Something is missing from our lives that we seem unable to find. From his Buddhist perspective, Loy sees lack emerging as we become aware that our sense of self is a construct. It is not constant and enduring. And as such, it is inherently ungrounded. It this experience of lack that drives us to try continually to ground ourselves in the money, success or love that we have come to believe will make us feel alive.

 

Loy’s A Buddhist History of the West: Studies in Lack, is a detailed exploration of the origins of lack as we in the West experience it, and the choices we make as we try to reduce it. His ideas provide us with our point of departure as we look at lack at work in the next few posts. And we examine how it relates to right livelihood.  

Many of us experience that sense of lack most profoundly and more persistently in our workplace. It is here that we first begin to see success as the thing that will make us feel alive. It is here that, because we are not a party to a decision or were not asked for our opinion or were not considered for that assignment or that promotion, we begin to strive to be visible—to be real to others in an attempt to be real to ourselves.

It’s a slippery slope. After a time our attempts to be visible and real diminish the natural joy that comes from good work. Work can have no value if it is not getting us anywhere. With that shift the day becomes drudgery; the work itself a tedium that takes time away from being noticed.

I watched a woman in the early morning as she prepared her market stall for opening. There was a ritual in how she laid out the vegetables and other items ready for the first customers. Each had its place and each held her attention until it was where it belonged supporting the scene she was creating. As she worked she laughed with the others up and down the line of stalls—stopping for a moment to help with an awning, sharing a smile with a passerby. There was no hint that this may have been the thousandth or ten thousandth time she had followed this ritual. There was no tedium in her movements. There was no guile in her laugh. Hers was a joy that emerged as she greeted each morning, expectant of a fresh beginning.

In the next post we will explore the lessons this woman and her morning ritual have to teach us.

Frank

---

[1] David Loy used romantic love, fame and money to illustrate our individualistic obsessions. I substitute success because my interest is in lack as it is experienced in the work place