A Buddhist story about covering your feet with leather shoes instead of trying to cover the whole world illustrates how inner peace protects you from anger, frustration, and stress better than changing external conditions. The speaker will teach this at a university in Guatemala and connects it to staying engaged with the world without being consumed by it.
Hey, good morning everyone. Here is your yes moment, a moment of yes. August 10th, and it is Monday, August 10th, 2020. Still up here in northern Michigan. I don't know if you can see, there's a red barn, red barn behind me. There's a lake that way, and I'm sitting in a car, and it's warm, it's steamy, but there's not a lot of privacy inside the house right now. Hollister is in there. Hi. She's on a work Zoom call. One of my sons is playing a video game, so there's not a lot of privacy around here. So kind of going old school back into finding solace in cars because you can close the door, block out the sound. Sure, you might have a clunky steering wheel right in front of you, but that's how we roll. So here we go. I know it's been a little while, uh, for my Moment of Yes, um, but still, uh, creating this routine here for Patreon. So anyone on Patreon, hello! And again, I'll be shooting these 2 to 3 times a week as a great way just to kind of tell you what I'm thinking about from a Yes and perspective and opportunities to engage and talk about things that are interesting to you. But what I wanted to talk about today is— so Pema Chödrön is an American Buddhist monk. She's written a bunch of books, fantastic books, The Places That Scare Us, And so she's written all these really great books. I've shared a lot of the stories that she's used in her books before. And I wanted to share an idea today that I read or reread a video that's on YouTube. And she's on a panel telling the story that I'm sharing with the UFM college class that I'm teaching this fall. I'm teaching a college class twice a week for students down in Guatemala. At UFM University. I guess that would be redundant, UFM University, because the U is university. So it's not U University, FM University. You kind of get my point. Too bad I'm an English major. So the idea, and I'm sharing this with the group tomorrow, she talks about if you look around right now, and this is back in 2004, but we can use it right now. If you look around right now, Masks, no masks. Trump, no Trump. Pandemic, what are we doing? How are people responding to it? Why aren't they responding better? The environment. So there's all these different issues that can get us fired up. And she shares the example that her teacher used, which was it gets you so angry that you almost wish that it's like trying to walk Barefoot and everything that you come across is sharp and cutting. Makes it really difficult because everything is annoying you. So if you could just cover the planet in leather, then anywhere you go, if you could just cover it in leather, nothing would annoy you, nothing would irritate you, nothing would cut you or injure you. It would be an easy solution if we could just cover the world in leather. We could walk freely wherever we went. But we know that we can't do that. So instead of trying to cover everything in leather, what if we covered our feet in leather? What if we wore leather shoes that protected our feet and covered our feet so no matter where we went, no matter how sharp, jagged, rugged— rocks, pebbles, glass— no matter where we went and walked, even those things would irritate us if we were barefoot. But if we covered our own feet in leather, We would be protected. So I love that analogy of so much of our anger and frustration and sense of peace that we give away is by trying to get other people to think like us or to agree with us. Whether it's this political season or how people are responding to the pandemic, we want others to— if everyone could just agree with me, it would be a wonderful planet. And we know how impossible that is. Instead, since peace is always an inside job, if I could walk around with leather shoes on, so no matter what environment I go in, no matter what terrain I'm walking through, I get to maintain a sense of peace and compassion and forgiveness and proactivity. And I can still be You know, as active as possible, but I'm not necessarily trying to change those around me, either the people or the conditions. But since peace is an inside job, I'm maintaining my own kind of you know composure. You know, Jesus talks about being in the world but not of the world, and I kind of feel like that's us wearing leather shoes, being in the world but not of the world. Great book, Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon McKenzie. He talked just that analogy of. Orbiting. We want to orbit kind of the hairball. We don't want to get sucked too closely because we get sucked into the hairball. But if we're too far away, we're disconnected from the real problems. But if we orbit, we can orbit these, these sensitive issues and still have influence without allowing ourselves to get sucked in. So that's what I'm thinking about today. Walking, walking on glass. with leather shoes. And so that's your moment of yes for today. How is that showing up? How is that relevant? And I would love to hear your feedback in the comments. That's it, guys. And if you're new to Patreon or on Patreon, feel free to share with others. Maybe we can create ourselves a fun little community here. Have a great day, guys. Bye.
