"Buddhist Principles : A Working Example" or "How not to lose your s**t when your baby won't sleep at 4 in the morning"

"I wanna Bertie Beetle"

The scenario is nothing unusual.  Mother of a 9 week old little boy who although he is the most beautiful little treasure in the world, isn't always so great at sleeping at night.  Dad has a demanding job and gets up with our other two cherubs in the morning (besides he lacks some of the necessary equipment) so it's Mummy on night duty.

 

Needless to say that after nine weeks of broken sleep.  Mummy's starting to get a little tired, cranky and teary.  We mums are very good at putting on brave faces in the light of day but let's face it when you're staring at a tiny little person in the middle of the night who has decided that rather then go back to sleep they would rather play or cry over nothing in particular for an hour and a half you start to go a little crazy.

 

I have been reading Sarah Napthali's "Buddhism for mothers with lingering questions" and have found her advice to be both logical and helpful (both key tests of advice as far as I'm concerned).  I decided at 4am this morning (man I used to be partying at this hour) as I started to tear up again that it was time to put this advice into practice.

 

The first piece of advice is to be in the present moment.  Rather then starting the dialogue in my head of how it's always me getting up to and having to settle the baby in the middle of the night (the past) and how I'm going to be exhausted tomorrow and as I can't see me catching up on that sleep any time soon I'm going to end up sick and run down (the future.) I chose to stay in the present moment and found that the tears stopped as soon as the back story ended. 

 

The next piece of advice is based on Buddhism's second noble truth "Our suffering is caused by our attachments and aversions."  Napthali (and Buddha) suggest that understanding that it is our attachment to or our aversion toward a thing/person/event that causes our suffering not the thing/person/event itself.  Right got it, my aversion toward the crying and my attachment to  sleep are what is causing me to suffer right now, not the fact that my baby won't go back to sleep.  OK time to let go of the aversion and attachment and just deal with what is in front of me.  I can do that.

The next piece of advice is to ask what the present moment requires of you.  Easy, the present moment simply requires me to get my little man settled and back to sleep.  I've done this before, it's not so bad.  Calmly cuddle, walk, pat and jiggle until he falls back asleep.  So much more effective than crying, swearing, storming, huffing and puffing.  Who'd have thought. What often took 90 minutes took just 10 and I was back to my bed and sleeping before I knew it.

 

I'm not saying that I'll never have another teary, non-sleeping episode again but it's nice to know that I now have some tools in the tool box to help me when I start to feel out of control.  Now if only I could deal with the attachment to a well rested functioning brain and the aversion to being vomited on I'll be sorted.

 

What great advice have you been given recently?

Hung up on housework?

Now where's that kit kat?

So here I am at home exhausted but happy after spending a few days cleaning my home with the energy that has returned with the second trimester of my pregnancy.  Happy I said, more like completely chuffed with myself.  The floors were done, the kitchen fully cleaned out and organised, the furniture was polished, the kid's rooms were spotless and the bathrooms were sparkling.  The house looked amazing for the first time in a long while and I was loving it.

Now let's rewind back and have a look at the last few months when I was completely zonked with early pregnancy and the constant nausea taking it's toll on me.  The house was never a bomb site but it was also never amazing and I felt this everyday as disappointment in myself for not being able to stay as on top of things as I would have liked.  

I found myself often in tears and yelling at my darling boy as he had yet again decided to change our carpet from white to psychadelic with whatever tools he had at hand (wax crayon, fruit juice, playdough, whatever he could get his hands on really.)  I took every attempt from my children to mess with the tidiness of my house as a personal insult and when they really trashed it I felt hopeless defeat for a while.

Seriously who buys white carpet?

Now as I stood there feeling chuffed about my amazingly clean looking abode it occurred to me that I had invested a lot of myself and my self esteem in my ability to keep a tidy home.  It might seem like something reasonably harmless and that heaps of people do but when you stop to think about it it's completely crazy.  I was investing my sense of wellbeing and happiness in something that not only has no affect whatsoever on the fate of mankind (my ruling stick for the import of anything,) but was also totally at the mercy of two children, my energy levels and my schedule.  In hindsight really not that clever.

Buddha amongst his many teachings brought us the idea that human suffering was caused by either attachment or aversion.  Attachment to things that we have or desire and aversion to those things we don't want.  Buddha taught his disciples that to achieve true happiness we need to rid ourselves of our attachments and aversions.  He wasn't suggesting that we never want for anything ever again but that we didn't attach ourselves or our current or future happiness to that desire.

Buddha also taught us about impermanence.  The fact that nothing in this universe including ourselves is here forever and that even the giant mountain of today will be a slightly different mountain tomorrow as it is affected by it's environment so that one day it may be worn away to nothing.  

Understanding the implications of impermanence helps us to let go of our attachments and aversions as we understand that those things that we feel we can't be happy without won't last nor will the happiness that comes with attaining them.  Also those things that we waste energy on hating, wishing away or avoiding will also not last and we can accept that with  time the cause of our aversion or our aversion itself will simply cease to be.

What does this have to do with my housework scenario? Everything.  I had attached myself and my happiness to having to have a clean home.  When my home was clean, I was content with this aspect of myself and would allow myself happiness until as is inevitable this condition for happiness goes away and I am back to denying myself happiness until the condition is restored.

So what to do?  While I don't endorse never cleaning your house again as keeping a clean home helps to ensure a safe and healthy environment for us and our families, I am suggesting that my sense of wellbeing is to no longer be impacted by the condition of having a clean home or not.  Now that I have awareness of my actions I can understand that while my home may not be as clean as I would like, this condition will not last and so I needn't waste my energy and happiness on wishing it to be different.

Gimme, gimme, gimme

I've talked about having a clean home but there are many different ways we display attachments and aversions that will be manifesting themselves in my life and yours.  Do you feel ashamed of yourself when unable to stick to your chosen eating plan and totally pumped when you get it right?  Do you think of yourself as a queen or king when you have achieved that longed for figure/muscle tone and a dog when your body looks different to this ideal?  Is your sense of self love affected by the behavior of your children, state of your bank balance, prestige of your occupation, make of your car?  The list goes on.

My challenge for myself over the next week and I hope you'll join me is to look at those things we have attached our sense of wellbeing to, list them down and then get real with ourselves about the impermanence of these things and the craziness of attaching our happiness to them.  I reiterate again that I am not asking you to stop working on a healthier you or stop working but to understand that these things are not you and you are not them.

Good luck and if you like what you read don't forget to follow my blog by subscribing at the top of this page.

Your balance buddy

Renae X

P.S Is there anything you can think of straight away that you have unknowingly attached yourself to?

Looking for a bit of weekend reading?

If you're looking for something to read this weekend check out my review on the book My Spiritual Autobiography by the Dalai Lama.

My Spiritual Autobiography

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Collected by Sofia Stril-Rever

Translated by Charlotte Mandel

Rider, 2011

ISBN 978-1-84604-242-3

Rather than being a blow by blow account of the Dalai Lama's birth to current day My Spirital Autobiography is made up of the various stories, speeches and interviews that the Dalai Lama has given over the years beautifully collated by Sofia-Stril Rever who also adds her own commentary when it is necessary for a clearer understanding.

It breaks the Dalai Lama's life into three sections As a Human Being, As a Buddhist Monk and As the Dalai Lama.  Not only does this logically work in terms of timing i.e. as a human being was the Dalai Lama's time before becoming the Dalai Lama, as a Buddhist Monk being about the Dalai Lama's training as a Buddhist monk and as the Dalai Lama when at the age of 16 the leadership was placed in his hands.  It also presents the Dalai Lama in the very order that he considers himself, a human being first and foremost, then a simple Buddhist monk and lastly as the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama has lived the most fascinating life from his boyhood in rural Tibet, to being discovered to be the 14th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, to his training in Lhasa and then the Chinese occupation and his subsequent fleeing to India where he became the leader of the Tibetans in exile.  After this the book delves into the Tibetans struggle to regain independence, to maintain their national and religious identity and to protect the precious ecology of "The roof of the world." 

The Dalai Lama's representation of the struggle of the Tibetans still in Tibet, the genocide that has occurred and the flagrant flouting of basic human rights that has been committed by the Chinese Communist party is extraordinary and eye opening.

In particular I found to be most compelling his description of the fateful day of March 10, 1959 when thousands of Tibetans spontaneously gathered to form a wall with their bodies around the Dalai Lama's summer residence as the Chinese Army aimed their cannons toward him.  The Dalai Lama made his escape disguised as a soldier in the hope that he could divert a tragedy.  The crowd did not disperse however in the days that followed and on March 17 the Chinese Army attacked and men, women and children all offered their life for their Dalai Lama.  Around ten thousand Tibetans were killed that day.

You cannot help through reading this book to feel compassion for the plight of Tibet and in-credulousness at how the world has allowed this to occur and continue.  You also cannot do anything be be amazed at the compassion that the Dalai Lama holds for the Chinese nation and his patience in trying to bring about a resolution to the solution (he has been plugging away at this for 62 years.) 

His lessons throughout the pages on compassion, humanity, inter-dependence and non-violence are thought-provoking and in some cases life-changing.  This book is informative, interesting and most of all is likely to touch a part of your soul.  I could not recommend this book more highly to anyone who is interested in the Dalai Lama, Tibet, Buddhism and personal development.

I leave you with a poem written by Tenzin Tsendu a poet and freedom fighter on the plight of those Tibetans still fleeing Tibet today.

Slowing threading our way by night and hiding by day, 

In twenty days we reached the snow-covered mountains.
The border was still many days away by foot.
The rocky ground scraped our bodies, bent from effort and pain.
Over our heads a bomber passed
My children shout in terror
And huddled against my chest.
I was so exhausted I felt as if I had no limbs,
But my mind was watchful....
We had to press ahead or we would die on the spot.
One daughter here, one son there,
A baby on my back,
We reached the snowfields.
We climbed up the sides of the monster-like mountains
Whose snowy banks often cover the bodies of travelers who ventured here.
In the midst of these snow-white fields of death,
A pile of frozen corpses
Awoke our wavering courage.
Drops of blood were scattered on the snow.
Soldiers must have crossed their path,In our own country they had fallen into the hands of the Red Dragon.
We pray to the wish-fulfilling Jewel,
Hope in our hearts, prayer on our lips,
We have almost nothing left to eat
And only the ice to quench our thirst,
We climb together, night after night.
But one night, my daughter complained her foot was burning.
She fell and stood up on her frozen leg.
Her skin was tattered and gashed with deep, bleeding cuts,
She curled up, shivering with pain.
The next day both her legs were lost.
Assailed by death on every side,
I was a powerless mother;
"Amala, save my brothers,
I'm going to rest a little."
Until I no longer heard her moans in the distance,
I looked behind me, through my tears and the torture of this pain.
My legs carried me but y mind remained with her.
For a long time afterwards, in exile, I continue to see her
Waving her frozen hands at me.
The oldest of my children, but barely a teenager,
Leaving our country was an ordeal.
Every night I light a butter lamp for her,
And her brothers join me in prayer.

Why balance?

So here I am yet another pilgrim in the search of finding balance in their life.  Why is it that we are perpetually  fascinated with this elusive creature we call balance?

Have you ever felt frustrated that you were working your butt off but getting little joy out of life?  Have you ever felt that once you finish all of your work and commitments that there is just no time left for anything else?  How about doing plenty of reading and thinking about changing your life but never any action?  

All of these statements and so many more that you are probably imagining right now indicate that your life lacks balance and none of the above situations brings about any happiness lasting or otherwise. Hence the age old quest for balance.  

Our bodies are the perfect example of our need for balance and your body is on it's own quest for homeostasis.  On the matter of homeostatis our goods friends at Wikipedia have the following to say:

Human homeostasis is derived from the Greek, homeo or "same", and stasis or "stable" and means remaining stable or remaining the same.^[1]

The human body manages a multitude of highly complex interactions to maintain balance or return systems to functioning within a normal range.....This process is essential to the survival of the person and to our species........An inability to maintain homeostasis may lead to death or a disease, a condition known as homeostatic imbalance.

Our bodies require so many different factors to be in balance to maintain good health such as temperature, blood composition, pressure, volume and sleep and our bodies are constantly in the process of trying to maintain this balance.

As the Law of Correspondence one of 12 universal laws from the book The Light Shall Set You Free (1998) Drs. Milanovich and McCune demonstrates that your inner self reflects your outer world.  So if your inner world is out of balance i.e. lots of negative emotions, too many unhealthy foods, too much on time not enough down time, this will be reflected in your outer world i.e. sickness, disease,unhappiness, loneliness and fatigue.

Age old though it may be (think back to Buddha and his swinging between prince and pauper before finally settling on something in between), I believe our current lifestyle has started to swing so far out of balance that it is both the cause of so much wide spread disease and has sparked this wide spread obsession with balance.

Today's lifestyle tells us that we should have more, be more successful, give more to our children, be more to our children, look after our partner's needs, look after our own needs, be slim, be healthy, be sexy, be always available, exercise more, sleep more, stress less, eat naturally, eat low fat, eat more protein, eat locally, be sustainable add to this the need to balance all of this with our bank balances and it is no wonder we are so confused and unbalanced.  There's just too darn much to think about.

This is why I have decided to devote myself and this blog to finding tools,ideas and methods that will bring our lives into sharper balance and I am more than happy to be the guinea pig for all of you out there in readersville although you are all most welcome to join me if you wish.

My promise to you is that I will endeavor to be as non-judgmental, non-prescriptive and non-getting-up-on-my-high-horse (what that's a word isn't it?) because let's face it, there's nothing worse than somebody else telling you how you should live your own life.

I hope you make the decision to join me in this quest by subscribing to my blog, offering suggestions, giving plenty of feedback and most importantly of all sharing your journey with us.

Today's question for you all is "Where do you think your life is the most out of balance?"  I'll tell you about mine in the next post.

Your balance buddy

Renae X