I bought a new Buddha!

Everywhere I go, I can only stay for so long before my Buddha nature calls to me.  Honestly I feel sometimes like the Johnny Appleseed of Buddhas since I go, I buy one and sit, I move on, I give it away and the cycle continues.  The need however, for that little statue always returns and I have to ask myself why.

After contemplating it, I think, like symbols in many religions and faiths, for me, it is a reminder and a comfort. 

So what does it make me remember?  On moment!  Yup, I simple moment!  What could be so possibly powerful in one moment?  Well, it is a story.  Then it will become clearer I think so that perhaps it will remind you of your one moment.  In life even one moment can be life changing!

I was in my early 20s and I was having anxiety attacks.  One after the other day in and day out. I refused medication.  I was told to look at the seconds hand of a watch and try to ignore that over-whelming feeling of panic I was experiencing all the time as the walls of my past crumbled.

I remember as a small child watching a scary movie.  This woman was being chased through her home by a man with an axe wearing a mask.  She would run and hide in another room then he would enter and find her and swing his ole ax, she would jump and run away to another safe spot only to have it again.

Even as a child I was always quite practical. I began to see that the real trauma was for her, as much in being chased and found over and over again, as much as the man and the ax. I decided right then and there I would find some place where he couldn't chop through the wall behind me and get my own bloody ax!  I didn't realize how much of an impression that movie made on my little mind, but I think it was with that decision, that my life changed forever.  Whether it was for the better or not, is a matter of opinion since I have always walked the road less travelled and I have never taken the easy road because if it wasn't what I felt was best, I just didn't take it.  I made sacrifices to walk these less travelled byways, but even in the midst of great challenges, I have had no regrets.

So when my life crumbled because I stopped living like an ostrich with my head in the sand, the anxiety began in earnest.  Did I time it really?  No, I embraced it. I did not run and hide going from room to room, I looked into it, I embraced it, I let it take me over, and like so many stories where if you face the monster that chases you, if you turn and look it in the eye, it will see it's own reflection and bless you, this is what happened for me.

In that one moment, I found what many teachers will call your Buddha nature, but what I call, myself.

It is a moment I shall remember for the rest of this life and perhaps into the next.  All the conditioning of my life up until that point, all my fears, all my concepts of who I am, just fell away. In that moment I stood in my true self without all the baggage, scars, scares or pain.  In that one moment, I knew I was all that I ever needed to be.  It was just a moment.  Just one moment.  The anxiety was gone!  No fear, only trueness of self.  I held that moment and like riding the top of the wave, I went out and did some things I always wanted to do but had no confidence to do.  I began a healing journey and never looked back.

Now, when I still, I am not sitting looking at a Buddha, I am really sitting WITH a buddha.  The statue is just there as a reminder, a little haven in a sea of conditioning and concepts, ideas and ignorance.  In the sea of Samsara, I have my little corner where I can sit and practice and who knows, perhaps one day let go of enough, embrace enough, and release enough to have that one moment again for that one moment, has fed me far more than I could ever have imagined.

You know, if you choose to be alone, life is easy. Things can go along quite smoothly.  There is no others and their stuff or the stuff they bring out in you.  There is inner stuff but it can come in it's own time and it's own way.  But with relationships, there is so many more challenges.  So many more things to deal with.  So much inner crap that can be triggered.  It isn't like when you can go on alone blissfully unaware of your blind spot.  When you live and deal with others, there will always be teachers, there will always be challenges.  There will be good moments, but there will also be work to do.

When you take a vow to do no harm, many times the ego will rear it's ugly head.  Many times the concept of who you are to yourself will be challenged and sometimes it will be shaken. It will leave you in a place of unease where nothing is black or white, only grey.  This I believe, is a good thing, this is the stuff of wealth and of self growth, or perhaps, non growth because really, it isn't like you are changing.  All this stuff is surface crap, the core of who you truly are never really changes.  Who I was in that one moment is still there, it is something I now know, but now it is buried.  The challenge isn't in unburying it, the challenge is in finding a way to embrace it and not give it power over your perceptions of life.

How ironic isn't it that the very ways you life with an open heart, also opens you up to more wounds and more scars and more baggage to be ignored.  Opening up doesn't make the process of acknowledging who you are easier, I think it makes it harder.  Far, far harder.

So I guess for me the next question is, Why does the road less travelled, have to be the harder one? hmmmm