The Level Of Our Training

"Cease from all evil whatsoever."
-Dogen

"I ain't evil, I'm just good-looking."
-Alice Cooper

Dogen, the thirteenth century Japanese monk widely-credited as the founder of our specific branch of Buddhism, opens his 'Rules for Meditation' with a series of questions. Essentially, he's asking: If the truth is always with us, why do we have to look to find it? If we believe enlightenment is part of our fundamental nature, why do we need to bother meditating?

Whether we're Buddhists or not, a version of this question has a way of cropping up in most of our lives. If we're okay/lovable/worthy just the way we are, how is it that we also have to be accountable for our shortcomings and looking for opportunities to improve?

I was thinking of Dogen's question watching a movie the other night. It was a love story about two good-looking, decent people, who had obvious chemistry and deserved the opportunity to see where it went.

Except that one partner repeatedly ignored the other person's 'no's, showed up at her work, stalked her to find her home address, and blackmailed her into going out with him.

The other partner slept with him and then didn't return his calls, alternated between doing nice things and pulling away, and when a potential issue arose, leaped into her car and drove away while he was in the shower.

It's been awhile since I've dated or written a dating column, but even from my celibate point-of-view, both sets of behaviors from a near-stranger fall into a little category I like to call Giant Red Flags.

After all, all of this was happening during the BEGINNING of the relationship, the part where you actually LIKE each other. If they're doing this kind of thing now, what happens when their relationship hits a rough patch?

I'll tell you. For them, absolutely nothing because they are Imaginary People in a love story about good-looking and fundamentally decent people that ends happily ever after. But most of the real people in my life who have exhibited or been in relationships with people that exhibited these kinds of traits...the result has often been a whole lot of suffering.

This suffering didn't necessarily happen because the people involved were bad people. It didn't happen because they didn't love each other enough. It didn't happen because they deserved to suffer.

It happened because they had practiced certain habits, and when the going got tough, they fell back on those habits, and those habits were not the sorts of habits that are helpful for building and maintaining a stable, trusting, two-way relationship.

I read a saying in a book on fear and disaster-preparedness and I think it's a great saying, because in my experience, it remains true no matter what you're talking about be it religion or romance, self-defense or social work, disaster-preparedness or dancing. The guy said something like, "In a crisis, people don't rise to the level of the occasion; they sink to the level of their training."

Or as a stand-up comic once told a bunch of us: "You do hundreds and thousands of shows as practice for the three or four that really matter."

And in our lives, which are the moments that matter? Do we know when they're coming? Do we even recognize them as they're happening?

What are we practicing? How are we practicing it? Is it the thing that is really most important?

How much time do we have to become ready?