You know those weeks when everything goes wrong at once? The washing machine breaks, the car has a flat tyre, you forget someone’s birthday. We all have those weeks right? It just feels like there is a litany of bad stuff piled on us. What do you do when this happens? Do you sink in despair or shrug your shoulders and know that it will pass?
Sometimes it feels like perfect days are few and far between. What makes a perfect day anyway? Usually it’s just one thing in that day that was simple, beautiful and connecting that made the feel day perfect.
Cultivating awe
I heard a podcast1 this week about the importance of awe in our lives. This doesn’t have to be ‘climbing a mountain awe’, it could be seeing a rainbow or noticing the intricate beauty of a spider’s web.
Psychologist Dacher Keltner has written about this in his new book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. In this podcast he describes how feelings of awe help us feel expansive, connected, creative. Even just a moment of awe-struck wonder can do this. He also talks about being in awe of moral beauty. This leads me to the teaching of the Saha world.
What is the Saha World?
In Buddhism the Saha world is the mundane world. It is often translated as the world of endurance. This world where we have to suffer the vagaries of life. A world of distress, desires and delusions. But also a world where there is potential, possibility, compassion, kindness, awe and beauty.
A monk once asked Tang dynasty Chinese Zen Master Yunmen: “What are the teachings of a whole lifetime?” Yunmen said: “An appropriate response.” Conditions of difficulty call upon our patience, but they also call forth our essential goodness and in action in the world as an appropriate response.
This appropriate response is imbued with compassion, for ourselves and for others, knowing we all live in this imperfectly beautiful world.
The world is sick and needs our love and care
I came across this lovely talk about the Saha World from the Upaya Zen Centre2. It’s looking at the Vimalakirti Nirdesha Sutra (a Buddhist text).
The Buddha said to Manjushri, "You must go visit Vimalakirti and inquire about his illness."…. Manjushri went to him and asked “this illness of yours, can you endure it? Is the treatment perhaps not making it worse rather than better? …what is the cause of this illness? Has it been with you long? And how can it be cured?"…This illness of mine is born of ignorance and feelings of attachment. Because all living beings are sick, therefore I am sick. If all living beings are relieved of sickness, then my sickness will be mended.”
In other words our Saha world is sick due to ignorance (of how things are) and feelings of attachment (craving and aversion). With sickness we respond with care and compassion, ethical action and unselfish behaviour.
This is our world; the Saha world. A world that is at once distressed and delightful, broken and beautiful. As a friend of mine said: just throw lots of love at it.
What I’ve been reading
This week I’ve been reading The Thorn Puller by Hiromi Ito. In fact it was in this book she mentioned the Saha world which inspired me to write this post.
The narrator shuttles back and forth between two starkly different cultures of Japan and California as she cares for her ageing parents.This semi-autobiographical novel is enriched with Japanese folklore, poetry, literature, and pop culture. One throughline is a series of memories associated with the Buddhist bodhisattva Jizo (also known as Ksitigarbha), who helps to remove the “thorns” of human suffering.
Comments
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Gratitude
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By the way, Hidden Brain is one of my favourite podcasts do check it out.
While there is a lot of Buddhist terminology in this talk, there is also a clear message and everyday examples.