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a scenerio
here is a scenerio i thought up in my thoughts of how a buddhist should handle things. you are waiting to park in a space that someone is pulling out of and before you can pull in, someone quickly pulls in the spot knowing you were waiting for it. i get the part about not letting the person upset you, but here is my question. should you just blow it off or approach the person, because it seems wrong to let people walk all over you. i think situations can be handled without anger on your part, but still stick up for yourself. what does everyone think?
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There are a whole pack of responses one can unleash and everyone will have an automatic reaction. Some people will react with anger, some with fear, others again with sorrow.
Angry may 'see red' and smash their car into the other: road rage resulting in possible injury or death and loss of no-claim bonus. Angry doesn't find a parking place thereby.
Fear may rush away and be hit by a speeding truck or spend the day trembling. Still no parking place,
Sorrow will mope all day.
Each of them has allowed their instinctual reaction to move them and has given away any power they truly had in the situation.
A practice of awareness permits us to notice that 'knee-jerk' and restrain it or redirect the energy. This is not the sole preserve of the Buddhist, although awareness training is fundamental to practice in a way that is less emphasised in many other disciplines. Buddhism does, however, systematise and develop awareness as a well-honed tool in reducing our stress and suffering.
I appreciate what THE PILGRIM says directly above and the way he sums it up:
I THINK what he's saying is that it's perhaps best to let it go, lest our reactions make it a bigger incident or experience than it otherwise would have been.
However, in a setting, such as at the workplace, where you have to be dealing with the same individuals all the time, it would be best to address such problems as they occur in a constructive and respectful way, always with an eye to justice (the pursuit of which is our very birthright). It is simply not right for people not to be treated with respect and courtesy.
However, Cars and Wars have a way of bringing out the worst in people, and I believe it best not to get caught up in "Road Righteousness."
My spiritual director, a swami, teaches people to drive as though everyone else was completely crazy. "Just do your own little part correctly, not minding or counting the faults of others. If mistakes are made and no one is hurt, just laugh it off. Yes, just Smile. Everyone's OK and that's the way we like it." Worth smiling about indeed!
The fact is that the other guy doesn't know you and any gesture you make will most likely be misunderstood and therefore, your action would not only be unnecessary but imprudent.
Once the spot is taken it is taken .. like crying over spilled milk ? Unless you really need the spot and hope to motivate the person to move the car so you can park in it ... then what is the point to carry it further ?? That would be waste of energy.
Anyway .. if you need to walk further because you lost the spot it should be your legs complaining Not your pride !! That would make sense in a buddhist sense ?
Have comfort .. knowing inside .. that if you really needed that spot .. you would be able to stand up for it. Draw your strength from that ... and the fact that you have the wisdom to know the difference.
Good Day ...
Hi azriel,
I think you’re perhaps too focused on wanting to know how “a Buddhist” should react in any given situation. There is no such thing as “a Buddhist” in an abstract and ideal sense. There is only the individual and his/her reaction.
It’s one thing to prescribe a course of action - a sort of “must-do/mustn’t-do” moralistic thing - like teacher says at school. It’s another to feel no anger arising in situations that would have triggered anger previously.
In the first instance you are trying to “live up” to some kind of ideal, in the second you just “are”. Both have their place, but the second is more significant.
Meditation and mindfulness are the key to releasing ego/anger and being able to take ‘yourself’ out of the event - to see it for what it is.
Kris
How would a person whose 'default emotion' was joy respond to someone taking their parking place? Perhaps with a song of praise that they can abandon their increasingly vain attempts at parallel parking and look for somewhere else, or, even, go home and forget the whole thing.
What is clear to me is that we humans have the ability to change a negative default emotion for a positive one by practice.
The answer - always - is No, actually, it didn't. So strictly speaking, you had no more right to it that the other person did. They just got there first.
It happened to me, once.
I was waiting for oncoming traffic to pass, so that I could cross the lane and park in a roadside bay and one car coming towards me, swung into the space.
I could immediately tell that the passenger (male) had seen me, and he turned to the driver (female) and must have said something like "You just took a space someone else was about to pull in to".
She must have replied along one of two lines. Either "ooops! oh, well, I'm here now...." or "yes, I know, but hey, that's tough luck!"
Either way, she neither moved, nor acknowledged me as she left the car, and made a point of not looking at me.
I?
I felt momentarily mad at her, but then, realising what was going on, realised that there would be no point in anger, recrimination or getting het up about it.
I moved on.
Anger, quite simply, is wasted energy.
As has been stated elsewhere, emotions are part of us.
But whether we rule them, or they rule us, is our business.
That's a beautiful emotion, indeed, Kind Pilgrim. If you lose a twenty-pound note the thought that some nine-year old sweet child might come by and find it is a wonderful thing to think on.
We were made for joy, for ecstasy. To exist is to ex-ist outside oneself in a sphere which is other-than-you, to be outside oneself, whereas ecstasy is to be beside oneself. Not a whole world of difference there.
Our beings come nowhere close to ending at our fingertips, but are interweaved with the nature of all the other fingers, hands, minds, and joys and sorrows of everybody else.
To sacrifice some little thing for the sake of the happiness or convenience of another is not a big thing, but can be a blessing if we do it from joy and love.
Oh, I keep forgetting to WELCOME AZRIEL777 to our little forum. If you would, kindly say a few words of introduction somewhere. Under Lotus Lounge there is a NewBuddhist Members Introduction Thread for such things.
WELCOME! Your questions are very interesting and refreshing.
Do you know Dr Rupert Sheldrake's work on what he calls "morphic fields"? It's worth investigating, I have found, despite the objections of reductionists like Dawkins to his method and the fact that he appears to experiment on very small effects.
Parking spaces outnumber parkers about 15 to 1 in my town. Why get tweaked about a parking space, you should be walking or using public transport if possible. Then, you get curb service!!