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Thanksgiving is only days away. It’s followed by the next Federal holiday, the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus. The Christmas season ends with New Year’s Day. This year end season of holidays brings on different feelings for each of us. For some, it becomes a struggle with memories, with expectations, or denials and pretense. The word “loneliness” creeps into our unspoken vocabulary more frequently. For others, it is a time where brain waves light up with joy and happiness because of their personal ties to the season, especially Christmas. It could mean sharing family traditions, spending more time at gatherings with friends and co-workers or baking cookies by the dozens...
It is hard to admit to ourselves there are times we may feel alone, even sad at this time of year. Every cultural message portrays happiness of spending money to buy gifts and spending more time with family and friends. But what the holidays also do is amplify our belief that if I don’t meet these cultural expectations, “I am responsible,” and am the cause of this failure.
When Shakyamuni Buddha delivered his first dharma talk after becoming an Awakened One, it was about the Middle Path, the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold path. What Shakyamuni awaken to is the reality of life. These teachings have come to be known as the Buddha Dharma.
We have spent a lifetime of living with judgments and expectations: judgements of good vs. bad; selecting this or that; wanting option A and avoiding option B; setting goals that mark success and mark failure. We have spent this lifetime reinforcing illusions and not understanding the ‘suchness’ 1 of reality.
This is the time of year we realize that a lifetime of living this way has not worked for us.
We even tell ourselves we have no rational reason to feel lonely or sad. We look around and see we know many people, maybe even be a member of a large loving family, but still, in the midst of so many people, we feel the disquiet of loneliness. Of course, there are many and conflicting reasons for these feelings ranging from grieving for the loss of a loved one, family conflicts, major life changes, and financial or emotional challenges. A more recent cause is our shift from connecting with others in person to one of impersonal screen time connections – a cause for loneliness documented by almost all current studies.
Does it have to be like this? This time of being aware of these feelings, raw and uncomfortable feelings of loneliness, is the best time to put the Buddha Dharma to the test.
We begin to understand how the desire to not be lonely contributes more to it. The desire for something, for anything is fundamental to dukkha, dissatisfaction. The more we desire, anything, the more we become attached
to that desire, in the end leads to greater dukkha. Because even if we acquire the object of desire, is it short lived, or not what we expected and then we are left with disappointment and latch onto another desire.
The Shin Buddhist practice of gratitude for what we do have is powerful when put into practice. It is liberation from desires, liberation from the need to grasp, it is liberation from discontent. No one said Buddhism is easy. What Buddhism offers is a guided path to free oneself from illusions, and yes, even loneliness.
Namo Amida Butsu
Namo Amida Butsu
Namo Amida Butsu
Rev. Anita
1 Oxford University Press – ‘suchness’
Tathatā. (Skt.). Term meaning ‘suchness’, and denoting the way things are in truth or actuality, and used especially in Mahāyāna Buddhism to denote the essential nature of reality and the quiddity or true mode of being of phenomena which is beyond the range of conceptual thought (vikalpa). The term is one of a range of synonyms for the absolute, which include emptiness (śūnyatā), thusness (tattva), the limit of reality (bhūta-koṭi), and true suchness (bhūta-tathatā).
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