I Want It and I Want It NOW - Sei-in Remy Jordan

My thoughts on balancing life and practice...

Last week - Mitra has been working so hard on her thesis. I have taken a week and I am only working a bit. The rest of the time I am taking kids to school, picking them up, making dinner and putting them to bed. Mitra is out late almost every night.

It is Saturday night after a week of this. Mitra is out working again and I haven't had a break. We were going to get together with friends for a playdate and then they had to cancel. The kids are not happy, so I take them out for what I hope will be a quick shopping trip to Bolen Books for some new books that we can read.

While we are there, Kiran finds this Spiderman toy. It is expensive, and not a book. I tell him that I will not buy it for him. He goes on and on and on about it. He is loud in the store. He tells me that he is going to run away. He tells me that he doesn't like me. He tells me that he wants it NOW.

Slowly (very slowly for me), he accepts that I am not buying the toy. He let's me take a picture of him with the toy to email to Mitra. We agree to put it on his wishlist. He goes through so much suffering trying to get this thing that he can not have at that moment. He puts me through suffering as he pushes for what he can not have at that moment. As Seishin says, this is one breath at a time territory.

Go back to summer 2004. I am working at PureEdge. Mitra and I have two kids and I discover Buddhism. It was like a switch going off. All I want to do is throw myself into this new world of meditation. But I can't.

It is summer 2005 and now I have been practicing with the Victoria Zen Centre for a year. We have just sold our company to IBM. I have been working virtually non-stop for about 5 months. I have barely had any time off. At the same time we have had Kiran and he is now a few months old. The company is finally sold and after 12 years, I now only have a few more months before I can leave. I spend those few months thinking about what to do. What I want to do is to go live in a monastery. I want to fully dive into Zen. But I can't. I have three kids and a wonderful wife. Instead we choose to go to South East Asia for 6.5 months. We travel around and have an amazing time. We get to see Buddhism practised in many different cultures (Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore). It is an amazing time for our family. But I still wish to be by myself and deeply involved with Buddhism.

It is now 2006 and I am committed to being as involved with the VZC as I can. I want to do the Eldership program. I want a name and fancy robes. I want it now, but I have to go to two sesshins. I can not join the one in Dec 06 because it overlaps with Darius' birthday. I believe I ask Eshu to move the dates, which he does not. I ask Eshu if I can audit the eldership program (sit in and be involved without credit, even when I do not have all of the pre-reqs). He says I can not.

So I wait until May 2007 to participate in my first sesshin. On this sesshin, I look at two individuals. One has taken his time. He has not rushed and he seems so at home in his robes. I admire him and his approach. The other has rushed and on one evening I am looking at him. He seems confused and lost in his robes. The robes are too big for him.

In that moment I realize that I have a wonderful life, just as it is. I do not need to be a monk. I can integrate Buddhism into my life without meditating all of the time. I am not going to be able to go live in a monastery, so I should just get over it.

In that moment, I realized that what I should do is just focus on living my life as best as I could. I should focus on being authentic and not worry so much what image I present to the world. I had wanted to look like a monk to everyone else. I was grasping for it. But I was actually fine just as I was - just as I am today.

That moment dramatically changed my relationship to Buddhism. I accepted where I was in my life and what choices were open to me. Being a good Buddhist no longer meant copying Eshu and being a monk.

I had learned this lesson about wanting. I am sure that there are lots of other lessons around wanting to learn, but I had let go of something that was getting in the way of my connection to Buddhism. It took me three years. During the painful 15-20 minutes with Kiran in the store wanting the Spiderman toy, it was so obvious to me the suffering Kiran was putting himself through. Yet I was so blind to what I was doing. Kiran only did it for 15 minutes or so and I did it off and on for three years.

Fastforward to Apr 2009... I have found so many ways to integrate Buddhism into my life. We were at dinner with friends recently and as my kids and I explained parts of Buddhism, I realized how deeply Buddhism was part of our lives - even if I rarely go to the Zendo or do interview with Eshu. Mitra is so busy with her Masters degree that my place right now is to be there and support her and my family. Even if I can't copy Eshu or Doshu, that doesn't mean I can't find my own rich and deep interaction with Buddhism.