(with credit to Alan Watts)
There’s a Buddhist story that tells of a farmer whose horse runs away. His neighbors tell him that they’re so sorry that his horse ran off and it’s unfortunate. The farmer replies with, “Maybe.” When the horse comes back to the farmer the next day bringing seven wild horses with him, his neighbors tell him how lucky he is that he now owns eight horses. The farmer replies with, “Maybe.” The next day while his son rides one of the horses trying to break it in, it throws him and he breaks his leg. The neighbors tell the farmer that it’s too bad this has happened. The farmer replies, “Maybe.” The next day when the conscription officers come to sign up his son for the army, they reject him because he has a broken leg. The neighbors tell the farmer how great that is. Again, the farmer replies, “Maybe.”
When I first started to learn Vipassana (also known as “mindfulness” or “insight”) meditation from my longtime Practitioner, I would come back each week saying something like, “My meditation practice was bad… My boss was wrong about… I was right about…” But she soon taught me a new terminology from the Buddhist tradition. Instead of “good, bad, right, wrong,” I learned to use descriptive words that aren’t judgmental such as “pleasant, unpleasant, comfortable, uncomfortable.”
Using such non-dualistic language has made me realize that there is so much more to life than what we limit ourselves to within the confinements of duality. The farmer knows this when he responds to his neighbors’ pronouncements of “lucky” or “too bad” with a “maybe.” He sees that life is one big ball of ambiguous uncertainty, that only the present moment is certain – but that certainty lasts only for the now moment. To be present in the now is to be open, open to not knowing what the next “maybe” brings; trusting that while we do not know, we do not have to live in fear or judgment. To be present in the moment is to be one with all that is now, and in this space there is no duality.
The Absolute Truth, meaning the highest spiritual understanding, is that God is not dualistic. And so, because we each are one with and of God, we are not dualistic. This past Sunday’s guest speaker Jeff Hargis gave a simple concise explanation of duality as feeling separate from God. When I get into a heated discussion, I can forget this and feel self-righteous as I decree that I’m right and the other person is wrong. Just saying these words, I can feel my body tighten up in a vise grip. I’m literally closing myself off from God. This feels unpleasant and so I pause, take a few deep breaths to let go of the bodily constriction, and then I feel the release of judgment. As I ease back into the present moment, I once again realize that there is no right or wrong, good or bad, just maybe now and now and now.