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It’s not too often a disease’s name includes a date as it does with Covid-19 so we will always remember its quiet start. By May 2020 the U.S. Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services joined forces with private partnerships to form Operation Warp Speed. Their goal, in a nutshell, was to develop a vaccine and establish therapeutics and diagnostics. At the time we believed the vaccine was the answer, that it would bring us back ‘normal,’ leaving the helter skelter life we began to live a memory of something to talk about in our dotage.
It wasn’t so simple, was it? We avoided remembering what we, as Buddhists, know: that unknown factor of causes and conditions. We make plans and expect them to take place. Sometimes we even add contingencies, like purchasing insurance against the unlikely.
Few people speak of the “new normal” anymore. We grew tired of waiting for it and most accept the reality of life - impermanence. If we pause and think about it, Covid-19 brings to bear another teaching – our interconnections. Just think computer chips, toilet paper, 100 cargo ships backed up off southern California ports with some waiting 8.5 days, and trucks with product but no truck drivers. Some of these were due to unintended consequences of governments’ polies. Some were due to employees not returning to work to manufacture that single small part required to complete a new car or washing machine. But all speak to our dependence and our connections with a global community working smoothly to maintain our ‘normal’ life.
We do not have to go sit on a mountain top to find the truth of this life. It is with us this very moment. We look around and see impermanence, our dependence on our interconnections and how unanticipated causes and conditions change our lives in a blink of an eye.
This life sometimes appears helter skelter, confused, lacking order or being haphazard, but it is not. We just need to look around to see the teachings every moment and everywhere. Then we can relax, be relieved and drop the anxiety we have burdened ourselves with.
Finding a “truth” in these times is not simple, even when it is staring us in the face. Giving these teachings a chance is risky business. We are immersed in long held beliefs and habits. We want something to hang onto and what we end up hanging onto is an illusion. Much like the man who was dying of thirst, parched, with not much longer to live without a drink of water until he opened his eyes and saw he was standing neck deep in fresh beautiful clean water.
Our desire for the end of this helter skelter life and return to normal again, is much like the man dying of thirst. We only need open our eyes.
Namo Amida Butsu.
In Gassho,
Rev. Anita
rev.anita.cbt@outlook.com
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