Sympathetic Joy

You'll notice that favourite thing #8 isn't a thing at all.

In Buddhism, mudita or sympathetic joy, is one of the Four Sublime States or Brahma Viharas.

It basically means that your joy will increase if you share in the happiness of others.

But before you get all whoa with the Buddhist mumbo jumbo on me, let me put this into everyday terms. It might be easier to grasp sympathetic joy by understanding what it decidedly is not. The opposite of sympathetic joy is jealousy.

Example: a co-worker gets promoted. She deserves it. She's been working hard, putting in some late hours, and really bringing it for months now.

How do you feel about this? Do your thoughts automatically go to, "Good for her. Her work has been recognized. Her promotion is well-deserved."

Or does it go to "Why haven't I been promoted. No one notices anything I do around here. I bet she got a raise. I really should make more money." Is their a tinge of begrudgement?

Let's sit with that today. We'll have 100 opportunities to practice sympathetic joy. I guarantee it.

My Favourite Things #7 Kraft Dinner

As a former fatty who never met a carb she didn't like and spent roughly 7 hours a day watching sit coms throughout junior high, I know my way around the junk aisle. For me, low fat meant I could have two.

For some time now, I've begun the sentence, "When I'm on death row..." That startling fact aside, I periodically like to toy with what I'd enjoy for my last meal.

For me, it's unequivocally the national dish of Newfoundland -- Kraft Dinner.

I love Kraft Dinner. Love it so much I could marry it. Probably will marry it, since no other offers appear to be forthcoming.

I love it's orange, artificial cheesy goodness, it's gloppy stick to your ribs quality and it's fat-inducing after burn. Kraft Dinner drags me back through time to my muffin-topped expandable waisted self sitting at my TV table in front of Wonderful World of Disney.

An old boss of mine was allergic to dairy. Of the anaphylaxis variety. Even he used to swoon at the smell of Kraft Dinner. There's something in it that feeds your inner child.

My Favourite Things #6 - The Dhammapada

Not surprisingly, I have a lot of favourite things that involve words.

This one, in particular, really rocks my world. It's the first in an anthology of 423 verses that makes up the Dhammapada -- a series of teachings of Buddah from the Theravada Pali Canon.

Don't let the Buddhism scare you off if you're not so inclined. Like most things that are true, it'll speak to your heart if you allow it.

***


We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.
We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you
As your shadow, unshakable.
"Look how he abused me and hurt me,
How he threw me down and robbed me."
Live with such thoughts and you live in hate.
"Look how he abused me and hurt me,
How he threw me down and robbed me."
Abandon such thoughts, and live in love.
In this world
Hate never yet dispelled hate.
Only love dispels hate.
This is the law,
Ancient and inexhaustible.
You too shall pass away.
Knowing this, how can you quarrel?
How easily the wind overturns a frail tree.
Seek happiness in the senses,
Indulge in food and sleep,
And you too will be uprooted.
The wind cannot overturn a mountain.
Temptation cannot touch the man
Who is awake, strong and humble,
Who masters himself and minds the dharma.
If a man's thoughts are muddy,
If he is reckless and full of deceit,
How can he wear the yellow robe?
Whoever is master of his own nature,
Bright, clear and true,
He may indeed wear the yellow robe.
Mistaking the false for the true,
And the true for the false,
You overlook the heart
And fill yourself with desire.
See the false as false,
The true as true.
Look into your heart.
Follow your nature.
An unreflecting mind is a poor roof.
Passion, like the rain, floods the house.
But if the roof is strong, there is shelter.
Whoever follows impure thoughts
Suffers in this world and the next.
In both worlds he suffers
And how greatly
When he sees the wrong he has done.
But whoever follows the dharma
Is joyful here and joyful there.
In both worlds he rejoices
And how greatly
When he sees the good he has done.
For great is the harvest in this world,
And greater still in the next.
However many holy words you read,
However many you speak,
What good will they do you
If you do not act upon them?
Are you a shepherd
Who counts another man's sheep,
Never sharing the way?
Read as few words as you like,
And speak fewer.
But act upon the dharma.
Give up the old ways -
Passion, enmity, folly.
Know the truth and find peace.
Share the way.

Favourite Thing #5 -- The Catcher in the Rye

I occasionally meet people who have never read The Catcher in the Rye or read it later in life and didn't get it. This is usually a sign from the universe that we will never hook up.

Fact is the work is such a seminal influence on my literary development that I can't even conceive of my reading life without it. We wouldn't have David Sedaris, Augusten Burroughs, Jonathan Franzen -- hell, even Buffy the Vampire Slayer, if it weren't for Salinger and Holden Caulfield.

Salinger is the prime mover.

So we come to today's favourite thing.

Everybody's got that one irreplaceable thing they'd save in a fire. Mine is a first book club edition of JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. It's all the more rare because it has Salinger's picture on the dust jacket. I bought it as a gift to myself for surviving my Masters Thesis.

Other gifts I gave myself for surviving my Masters Thesis were sessions on a tanning bed (third degree burns) and purple hair (they said it was a temporary rinse, but they lied).

What can I say. Stress does strange things to a person.

Favourite Thing #4 -- Moisturizer

You may well leap out of bed looking all youthful and dewy but that's because you're either younger than me or sold your soul to the devil when you were 13.

Truth is that, left unattended, I have the chapped, cracked skin and conspicuous capillaries of a perpetual whiskey drinking northern Scot. My complexion stands me in good stead with my peat-moss digging ancestors. Despite drinking a thousand glasses of water a day, my skin contains almost no natural moisture. You could sand drywall with it.

So imagine my delight when I happened upon a moisturizing agent that actually worked. Enter H20 Face Oasis Hydrating Treatment.

First of all it's blue, which leads you to believe that it's otherworldly. The ads tell us it's sea-derived, so I believe, perhaps incorrectly, that it might be a gift from our mermaid friends. A way of saying, thanks for giving up the dolphin hunt. And it goes on like jelly. Blue mermaid jelly. But the best thing of all is that our face just sucks it up. It's like one of those masks they put over burn victims. And the next thing you know...shazam, my raw, rough epidermis is glowing like a Georgia peach.

Of course all this beauty comes at a price. A jar will set you back about $48. I usually go through about two a year. Small price to pay for looking this good.

My Favourite Things #3

If you like a little alliteration with your onomatopoeia, old Yeats is your guy.

One of the most lyrical examples in the English language is a line from The Lake Isle of Innisfree: "I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore."

I heard a (probably drunk) Irish dude reading it on the CBC the other night. The Irish are second only to the Welsh in making almost everything they read sound musical and a little like poetry. Even the phone bill.

Anyway, I present for you one of my favourite poems in the English language. I've got a framed copy of it on my wall at home -- a reminder that no matter how smart I think I am, I'll never produce anything as close to perfection as this is.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

My Favourite Things #2

While I like to shake up my breakfasts -- one day steel cut oatmeal, the next pumpernickel bread with a generous swab of that laughing cow cheese -- there's usually one constant. A dried fig.

Dried figs are nature's wonder food. They're nutritious, high in potassium, calcium, magnesium and iron, and are a good source of fibre. Figs are fat-free, sodium-free and cholesterol free.

There's pretty much nothing super fig can't do.

If you don't eat meat -- which I haven't for over ten years now -- you'll appreciate the consistency of the lowly fig. It's tough and chewy, kind of like I remember meat to be, but it rewards you with gooey sweetness inside.

I've stewed figs before -- usually with apricots, dates and apples -- but the dried fig can proudly stand alone.

The Bible is lousy with fig references, too. Everything from Adam and Eve cladding themselves in fig vines to my fave Song of Solomon.

So all hail the fig. Fave thing #2.