Building Fences!

I have been investigating the reasons why is it that we feel hurt, dissapointment, sadness, misery, anger and all other negative emotions. I particularly focus on the negative emotions because they are the most disturbing and disruptive to my living as I am sure it is to most of other people. Happiness and joy will never bother us and keep us up through sleepless nights of despair but anger, hurt or misery do. So, I have tried to look at why these emotions arise in the mind over and over again. How do we begin to understand them and then find a way to rise above them.

I realised that these negative emotions arise because we engage in an activity which I termed 'Building Fences". This is not something that I only do myself but something that we all do with zest and we all have very valid reasons and justifications to do them. So, in that we lose any sense of higher functioning thinking! Now how can this possibly happen?

Well, when we get angry or miserable the object of our anger is NOT our anger. It is the person who is responsible for our anger. It's always out there, in the other person. So, what we try to do in this instance is to get rid of the object of our anger in order to protect ourselves. I need to create a boundary in order so that the other person can no longer make me angry or hurt me now or in the future. So, we define a boundary, which I call a fence. So, we build a fence. This is for our security. These are not physical fences that any of us can see or touch. They are all mind made and invisible. But there is a fence, a boundary that the other person cannot penetrate. This boundary is not in the other person. It is in us. The boundary is called "hate", 'resetment' or all the words that we are so familiar with.

But the critical part is that the fence is around us. While it prevents the other person from entering our surrounding area, we are restricted by the fence that we have built around us. This is the foolishness that we never see. We never see the harm we do to our ownselves in building fences because the only thing we can see is keeping the other person out. But in doing so what we fail to see, to our own detriment, is that we have boxed ourselves up in our little allotement because of someone else who has complete freedom whereas we don't. Isn't that a shame!

I realised and was so bewildered as to why I have done this to myself for years and continue to do this to myself again and again even now. It doesn't make sense. We love ourselves above all and yet here we are in the name of protecting ourselves, we limit our own freedom in life. Basically we lock ourselve in a prison. We give ourselves a sentence. What a shock!

Why do we do this? Well, we get to this point because we think we are protecting ourselves. The greatest mistake of all. The only way we can protect ourselves is not to build a fence but NOT to build fences. Also to find fences that we have already built and break them down. But I will tell you that this is a very difficult task.

Why? Because, somewhere deep down there is a belief that freedom can be found in the restrictions that we surround ourselves in. Isn't that incredible?! I am baffled. Is the ego this non-sensical? We are scared of freedom that we want to stay within self-imposed shackles. Cannot fathom what rationality lies within this thinking but it happens in all of us. See for yourself.

The only way to take the fences down is to see and feel the tightening of the breathing space and the closing in of our own freedom which would make any living creature want to break out of it in a mad dash. But we have to feel the pain of the limited space that fence builiding creates. Without that we will never strive to take any fences down. Instead we will live in the false security it brings while it will keep eating away our freedom until escape becomes too late for us.

One who protects the Dhamma, is protected by the Dhamma

The Buddha himself declared this point during his lifetime. That is the person who protects the Dhamma is protected by the Dhamma itself. It has always fascinated me. One use to wonder whether there is a magical element to it. May be. But for now...all I can pen down is my understanding of how Dhamma protects the one who protects the Dhamma. What may unfold in the future will be determined how well I continue to uphold the Dhamma.

What is Dhamma? It is a worthwhile thing to investigate before embarking on, how Dhamma aims to protect oneself.

Dhamma is the truth of the world. In simple terms I understand Dhamma to be kindness we show to ourselves and to each other, respect, generosity without expectations, humility, joy at others success just as much as our own without any trace of envy, forgiveness, not holding grudges, not asking for more that what is needed, praising and not finding fault whether one is able to or whether for pleasure of satisfying fleeting moments of ones cruel desires, patience at moments of grave worry and restlessness, living up to highest of virtues and moral conduct, not destroying life, others, emotions, taking away what is not given, and many more of standards that uphold which makes us essentially human.

This is the Dhamma. These laws whether they are protected by laws of society or by human rights or by UN, are unspoken and unwritten. These unfold according to a natural rhythm which the Buddha called cause and effect. They cannot be messed with and cannot be made untrue. It's like a boomerang. Once sent to space, it will come back. It's a certainty. So it Dhamma.

A person that upholds the Dhamma, attempts to live by the principles which it lays out. A Buddha is born into this world, in order to lay out these natural laws and show us the path. Whether we take that into our heart and follow it, is complete up to our own wisdom and judgment. However, whether we follow the path or not, we will be subjected to the laws of Dhamma.

Over the last 4-5 years I have attempted to follow the path laid out by the Buddha. I must say that it's not an easy path to tread on. It takes much effort. But as you walk you get to see lovely scenery. The walking along the path is the reward.

In walking the path, you start putting into practice all the qualities that I mentioned before. Of course these qualities are continuum's. In one corner you will find the unwholesome quality and the other corner you will find the wholesome quality. As you walk the path you go from one corner to the other corner. But it's not a straight line. You fall off the line and sometimes you go back and forth. But each stride and each moment of effort will keep pushing you on the continuum of that quality. As you develop like this, you move towards the light, which is the wholesomeness of the quality. For example, from anger towards loving-kindness. Of course you will in the path encounter many emotions from anger, to resentment, to attachment in the middle, to kindness...the perfection of the quality is loving-kindness. Of course this perhaps might taken lifetimes...but this will happen. But in the process towards this, you being to experience the feelings of wholesomeness.

Now you are moving closer to the Dhamma. You are upholding the Dhamma. Each time someone hurts you, instead hurting back, you start showing some amount of kindness. You may still have angry thoughts but they may have gotten less over a few months or years.

What I have found over the last 4-5 years is that, especially in regards to anger is that, when someone does something to make me angry, or I encounter a situation that makes me angry, I don't stay angry for as long as I used to. I don't burn in it as I used to. I stay in it for a while but my mind drops it. Then I move into love. It's almost like I move from dark to light. Like I have walked in the desert and found and oasis. It's wonderful.

My heart has found it's protector in the Dhamma. By upholding what is good, which is loving kindness, loving kindness springs to action when I encounter an object of anger and soothes my anger. Only because I have over the last few years continuously developed it on as many occasions as possible.

I believe this what the Buddha said in Dhamma protecting the one that upholds the Dhamma. Of course I can go on the give many a descriptions but I think one example is adequate to demonstrate the power of upholding what is true and what is good.

May I have the strength to continue to uphold the Dhamma as long as I live until my last breath leaves my body! Sadhu! Sadhu! Sadhu!