Wicked’s Modern Rants : Zen and the Art of Being a Bitch

Zen and the Art of Being a Bitch :Boundaries, Friendships, and Helping those who help themselvesBy A. Wicked(Illustrated by Katherine Gray)I already know what you are thinking, ZEN and Bitch? Auntie, surely you have lost your mind this time. There are no two concepts so different than being a Bitch, and becoming a Zen-Master. This article is going to deal with how you can bend some concepts to your will, knowing thyself, and pursing enlightenment to where it leads, and not pushing it to being simply another exercise on becoming something you are not.

UH! Before you Zen-nerds get a word in, I also know what you are snarking. WRITING about ZEN? IROONNIIIIC! For those of you unfamiliar, Zen likes to de-emphasize reliance on writing & gurus. Self and Enlightenment are discovered through meditation and inner exploration. The top two reasons to stick with ‘Zen’ is that it sounds spiffy, and it has a powerful lesson… to seek knowledge and enlightenment from within, and not from external resources.That being said, while Zen and Buddhism in general have some really fabulous ideals, they aren’t always something that are applicable to life outside a Convent on top of a mountain. Eating, Coping, Living, Hating, Caring, Attachments… these are normal parts of our lives. So, How would a normal-bitch get through his/her life while trying to seek this inner enlightenment? Take up New Age? Give Up on Spiritual Lives? ABANDON ENLIGHTENMENT? Nahhh. I think we just need (as Westerners are prone) to stick our favorite teachings in the blender, and make our own adult-sized smoothie on the Rules of Engagement, Honoring the Rituals That Make Us Feel Better, Learning Boundaries, and How To Cope. Not all of which I will be covering today.

Most of Zen and Tao begin with 3-10 precepts. Don’t Kill, Don’t Steal, Honor the Body, Do not Lie, Don’t Talk about Others, Give Generously, And Don’t Do Drugs, mmkay? Sound familiar? These Precepts, and stories about the Buddha are WELL WORTH examining (Ooh Homework time!). There is an effortless neutrality when you are making study of a religion you have not been raised in. It has insights, and to me there’s NOTHING like learning something new to teach me about myself (we could all use a little more openness and flexibility, amirite?) [ Zen on Wikipedia, Zen Guide ]Now, allow me to switch subjects to my problems with our conceptualization of these practices. Never to Harm? Give Generously? I can agree with these in theory, yet its painfully easy to continue to be a fair and easy Doormat for the world. So many of us have issues with giving what we don’t have to give, and finding ourselves empty… Good intentions firmly in place, we find ourselves being sore, resentful, and helpless at a world that will not help us back when we have tried to help it so much. This my friends, breeds the most contemptuous and dangerous of habits, unwitting Passive-Aggression. To the point which one could even fail to help when help is really needed, being wound SO tightly in the proverbial tentacles of ‘trying’ to seem & be things not within our capacity to be. The pursuit of being a good person without having your boundaries firmly in place can end up in so many tears, and so much wasted time.

Precept #1 – Know your Boundaries :

This is the most difficult precept isn’t it? Even for someone with a relatively healthy family life, it is difficult to draw your boundaries. Try aggravating that with any kind of misuse by authority figures as a youth and you have a dangerously self-loathing habit. Boundary issues lead us to run ourselves ragged to ‘help’ our friends, show our bosses that we are loyal and good children, or drive us to get top grades to PROVE our worth to the world. While trying to prove our worth we EXHAUST our good will, and find ourselves cast adrift without paddles in the sea of toxic relationships and bad luck. To which, when we lose a job/friend/situation, we immediately look inward for what we did not do enough of to keep those people with us, and chastise ourselves for not having given -enough-.

This step of finding boundaries is extra hard in a world that seems, a little more every generation, to demand that a lack of personal boundaries some-how equates to goodness, and that personal sacrifice will rocket you to the top of the world. Be prepared in finding these boundaries to be called names, lose a few ‘friends’, and find a whole new outlook on your personal life. This leaves us with The Question. How Do I Find my Boundaries miss M’am? Boundaries are like a boxing-ring made of elastic. I would suggest with little things, take time to do things you always promised you would, gaze at a sunset, listen to the wind through the leaves. Meditate, ie, sit your butt down somewhere peaceful (to you) without TV, Internet, turn off the phone, and simply let your mind go. Eventually you can gain the focus to blank your mind of thoughts and worries. A little at a time, lots ofpatience.The more you begin to know yourself, the more you take this time, the more you will know when you are pushed emotionally, the more you can become your own wise voice, the more you will realize more quickly that you are beyond your own boundaries, and make the choice to pull back, or continue. This could lead to as little as finding micro-contentment in situations that used to make you dreadfully unhappy, to finding more clarity on what you truly want out of life, and the courage to pursue it.How can this make ME “A Bitch”, Auntie? Sometimes, when one is practicing the art of Martyrdom (whether intentionally or not) we tend to create toxic relationships, or nurture the toxicity of current relationships. Due to the nature of these relationships, we find ourselves surrounded by people who will continue to encourage a certain helplessness, then begin to throw blame if you show signs of not being the person (doormat) they used to know. In blunter terms, when you grow a pair, the people who’ve been feeding off you will become resentful, angry, and mouthy as they lose control over what you think of yourself, and what you are willing to do for them. While painful, the purging of these connections will only suit you better in the end, although you will be labeled, libeled, and judged by the bottom-feeders.

Precept #2 : Friendship – On Being Your Own Friend :

AH! The one that should be MOST obvious, right? In ‘The Inner Child Workbook: What to do with your past when it just won’t go away’, Cathryn L. Taylor gives the most wonderful gentle nudges that all roil down to a very simple exercise. Imagine yourself as a friend, then imagine your telling yourself the things you do, the judgements, admonishments, the little white lies. Imagine if that was -someone else- telling a good friend these things, how would you react?To love thyself is a great challenge, and it’s certainly not the kind of thing that begins with placating yourself with happy affirmations about being beautiful and awesome in the mirror. The struggle towards genuine self-esteem, the aiming to find oneself sexy or awesome… These are lofty goals along a long path. The first step is to at least treat yourself as a somewhat acceptable friend. When you are hard on yourself, you are being hard on a friend, and should be just as outraged as if someone had something like that to someone you really care for. Maybe in time you can find grounds for an inner truce.

Why is this an Important Step? Perhaps the old adage about not loving others before oneself is true. You can lay down before others, you can offer them your whole broken being, but can you truly ever be functionally loving to friends, lovers, or family before you come to some truce with yourself? That’s for you to figure out. But you will find it a bit easier to forgive everyone else’s flaws, once you have forgiven your own. Does this mean that you will change from a baggage of cynical, damaged goods into a Monk overnight? No. Probably not. Is it OK to be a baggage of cynical, damaged goods? Yeah… it really is.

OK, I really don’t know why THIS could make me a Bitch? This one isn’t quite as obvious, but it runs a bit along the lines of overhauling the attic. There are some normal-for-yous, and bad decisions you will cease to make once you start trying to love-thyself. Maybe it will be as simple as culling your life of people who reinforce negative voices, perhaps it could be a job, a relationship, or habit. In any case, a person who comes to a confidence and certain peace with oneself can be called a number of names, and in the gross bare reality of it, those names aren’t always ones of admiration. Its OK tho, becoming confident, steady, and willful are all worth the prices of being called stupid names by people. The more they call, the more you will realize that they frequently act out of fear, hurt, and personal fragility’s that they have yet to face… and even in your Zen-like inner sympathy for them, you will be Bitchy enough to know empathy is not an excuse to let anyone batter you.

Precept #3 : Generosity – What can you Afford to Give?

Mmm. Generosity. What a lovely word right? So often our emotional abusers like to tout it… when we scrap to find our boundaries, we are judged as being un-generous. When we give our food to the person who says they are hungry, do we get thanks? No. Did we do it to get thanks? Very likely, even if we desperately want to be judged as ‘Good’ or ‘Nice’ by our peers. True Generosity is hard to find because, as stated in the above lectures, we cannot truly find it for others until we can afford it to ourselves.What is Generosity? It can come in all forms. It can be a kind word to someone having a bad day, putting off some personal feeling to benefit someone else. It can be money, time, or even a half-listen to someones problems. The fact is that to truly take joy in giving, you must be able to come to the point where the gift of Generosity is given with a calm and joyful heart. If you cannot give it without missing it, or needing something in return, that’s OK! Hold Back if that’s what you need to do. Don’t go around trying to give what you don’t have. Its like trying to buy a Steak Dinner on an overdrawn bank-card, it’ll hurt more when the Bank’s fees build up than if you had just gone home and had some Ramen.Always take a moment to think when you are asked something. When someone wants to go with you, when they need money, company, time, or whatever it is you are being asked, stop. You must examine your boundaries, your patience, and your purpose. Never ever ever give anything if you don’t feel comfortable with it, the price is too high, and the intention is soiled. You MUST risk being thought of an in-generous bastard, and fail to cave to social pressure to give what you don’t have.Perhaps, when all things are even, and you meditate, find generosity towards yourself, and boundaries, you will find that your inner capacity to give increases, rather than decreases.

Note : I do not believe in forgiveness if you do not feel the capacity to forgive. No one, but no one should get a free pass to walk all over you. Finding the Emotional Generosity to forgive is within the individual to weigh, and we cannot force or be forced to brush off our hurts like they are not important, simply because it’s what a ‘good’ person would do. A truly amazing person can find the strength to be unforgiving until they can deal with the way they feel about things. I think one must sometimes indulge ‘bad’ feelings to run their course, rather than caging them, which can turn a mole into a monster.Why Bitch? Well… I have to duh y’all on this one. The moment you stop making every moment an effort to be NICE to people, the very second you abandon the need to seem good, you will find yourself in the bad-girl section of the chorus. Niceness is so often used in our society exclusively as someone who will invite you to step on them, or someone who will whole-hearted facilitate your needs before their own, someone stupid and easily manipulated. So often those who adopt this visage end up unintentional martyrs. They give away their power one tidbit at a time, until they have nothing left but the idea that someone thinks they are nice, instead of mean. True Generosity is something more subtle and private than we like to make it out to be, its something that doesn’t earn you a tax write-off, status with your friends, or a pleasant moniker.

Precept #4 – Patience… Wax on, Wax Off :

The ordinary world is… Ordinary. While most of us wanted to grow up to be Millionaire Spy Rock-stars, most of us ended up worker bees, perpetual students, or still live in our parent’s basement. One of the Great Buddhist Dudes said, “A day without Work is like a Day without Food”. Admittedly, deep in my selfish, piggy-little-heart, I disagree. I could fritter away my days painting endlessly between snatching naps in a hammock by the sea. HOWEVER, in my normal, long-suffering-heart, I know that work builds character. Perhaps if all young rich kids where sent away to a farm, or forced to work for Minimum Wage to maintain a shitty apartment, they might have a bit of appreciation for the goodness of their idle, comfortable lives.The fact is, reality is exceptionally disappointing. There are some days where it becomes overwhelming to anyone, let alone the host of creative’s I know. Here we face a lifetime of pushing through the week to live like WILD things on the weekend, then return dully to our work week. One day after the next, year after year.However, perhaps there is a light to it. In Buddhism, Monks often take up simple, repetitive work with gusto. We could say this is limited to things like Gardening, or waxing a car, or mopping… but I feel that it’s entirely possible to attempt, the face of great adversity, to apply these concepts to our crap day jobs. Every customer we face, or day that is the same -can- perhaps have a joy of its own? An order? A contentment? If nothing else a learning. Do we have time, or do we take time? How much of life’s rat race lies in our head? In our single-mindedness to escape the doldrums of life, are we simply running around in a maze of our own minds, regardless of setting, employment, or lifestyle?

The fact is, life can run away from us while we are gazing at our prize. This is where we as people need to become mindful of our actions. Not to the point of pain, not to control, but again, perhaps as meditative observers.OK no really? There is NOTHING Bitchy about being Patient! Ahh! Young Padawan… How wrong you are. The patience has very little to do with the actual exercise of working, but teaching oneself the art of patience. In youth we BURN with passions, and run half our lives off seeking vengeance, love, and gratification. These are the MOST marvelous, exhilarating, and damaging things about youth, and they are things that we should not try to have the energy to continue. While we, as Bitches, do not want to let people walk over us, there are a few occasions where we must find the space to allow it to happen, without trying to start a revolution over it. This could be at work, at school, or frankly, anywhere. The world can have days of being one large jerkhat, and instead of declaring war at every moment, we must FIND our patience (somewhere close to our happy place). In simpler terms, think of the patience of a Lioness. She sits in the grass and waits, does she try to pluck every gazelle from the savanna? Nay! She waits for the right opportunity to pounce. Keep trying, Grasshopper… keep trying SMARTER so that the beauty of the strange order of things isn’t lost on you.

CONCLUSION: 

So basically, for those who thought that was all too tl;dr : Find Boundaries (because no one will find them for you),Find a way to Tolerate yourself(or you will never tolerate anyone else), Only be Generous if you can Give it(because being a Martyr sux), and Try your Damnedest to take Every-day Bullcrap as Another Experience in the Rhythm of Life (because sometimes, it works out in your favor). Will you have it all down and be the top Monk-Bitch by the end of the day? No you won’t. Will this solve all the world’s problems? Nuh-uh, not by a long shot. There’s a big bad world out there. Should you take me literally or read my worlds in an epic sense? Nahh. I’m just as screwed up as the rest of you. However, I hope this helps YOU all untie some of your own personal knots. Live is a Journey, and maybe if we pay attention, it will be a Fine Journey, full of stories that will reach beyond our lifetimes.

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