Stick To One Boat

“A marriage built on mutual understanding, good communication and sincere efforts to help each other has a much better chance of lasting. Mental communication is much better than physical.” – Lama Thubten Yeshe

I’ve been contemplating marriage and relationships a lot this week. Our friends Brad and Chandler who are here visiting us in Costa Rica are getting married today. Jim and I are the only two people in their ceremony (along with their son Owen and an officiant). To say that we are honored is an understatement. Our friends Jim and Lisa are also getting married today (technically tomorrow as they’re in Australia). I can’t help but reflect on my own relationship with my Jim. We are coming up on our 3 year anniversary, yet we’ve been together for a total of 7 1/2 years, and knew each other for a year before that.

I didn’t want to get married when I was younger. The idea of settling down seemed constricting. Commitment wasn’t my thing. I wanted to explore many different kinds of people and relationships. I wanted to be “free.” Maybe it was that I didn’t know the benefits of being fully vulnerable and generous. Maybe I just hadn’t found my match. Things changed a bit when Jim and I started dating. I could envision a future with him. He became my best friend. I know it sounds corny, but being around him has made me a better person. He continues to inspire me to be kinder and more generous. Being with him has allowed me to experience a more selfless kind of love.

Now in all honesty, I’m not the quickest at changing my behavioral patterns. I’ve made mistakes, big and small, but I always take the action to mend what I’ve done and strive to grow toward better things. I’ve had moments of, “maybe the grass is greener somewhere else, with someone else, or on my own.” What I’ve found is that when I have these thoughts it’s due to something I need to do to take care of myself better, or something I need to communicate with Jim. Once I do those things, I return to having a strong conviction that this relationship I have with Jim is one of the absolute best things in my life and I appreciate it as a vessel for personal growth.

I recently re-read Pema Chodron’s The Wisdom of No Escape. In one of the chapters she talks about the idea of people who are spiritual shoppers and how not sticking to one tradition leads to missing out on a lot of great things. I couldn’t help but apply it to relationships. She says, “When one sticks to one boat, whatever that boat may be, then one actually begins the warrior’s journey.” This journey she speaks of is one of personal growth. When we’re really committed to the journey of our choosing, everything speaks to us and educates us and we feel certain that this vehicle is the one meant for us.

Yes, we must search for our boat, but we’re uncommitted until we encounter one that rings true to our heart and we decide to get in it. This is important because without it, the minute we begin to hurt, we’ll just leave or look for something else. When we stop shopping and settle into our boat we can go deeply into the journey it holds. Continual dabbling is a way of avoiding going deeply by “trying to get comfortable, trying to get secure, whereas if you stick to one boat and really started working with it, it would definitely put you through all your changes. You would meet all your dragons; you would be continually pushed out of the nest. It would be one big initiation rite, and tremendous wisdom would come from that, tremendous heartfelt, genuine spiritual growth and development. One’s life would be well spent.”

I really love the six traditional components of the Bodhisattva Path, called the Paramitas. They compromise part of the Buddhist wedding vows. They are called transcendental virtues, for they are the way we overcome self-cherishing and go beyond ourselves in our relationships with others.

1. The first is the vow to practice generosity, symbolized by the food offering. With this vow we promise to give our body, speech and mind to others, specifically our mate, and to work with overcoming our own internal miserliness.
2. Next, we vow to practice discipline, symbolized by perfumed water, by giving up self-indulgence and insensitivity to the needs of others.
3. We then vow to practice patience, symbolized by incense, by taming our anger and irritation with obstacles, and instead to appreciate difficulties as ways to deepen our connection with other beings, especially our mate.
4. This is followed by the vow to practice exertion, symbolized by the flower offering. Here we promise to overcome laziness and depression by rousing ourselves to the everyday challenges of our lives.
5. Then we vow to practice meditation, symbolized by the candle flame, by overcoming our attachment to comfort, constant companionship, and pleasure, so that we can develop steady and sane minds.
6. Finally, we vow to practice penetrating insight, symbolized by the musical instrument, so that we can see things as they are without confusion or emotionalism.

If all of these are practiced, then we can manifest wisdom and compassion in our relationship with others, especially our partner.

A few things from our wedding ceremony (Created in partnership with our dear friend Greg, now know as Tashi Gonpo, who also officiated our ceremony):

• Love is wishing others happiness.
• Marriage is the equal commitment to grow in service.
• Our inner resilience and strength is developed through taking on challenges, not just through joy.
• We need people in order to practice compassion.
• Love embodies one of the beautiful seeming contradictions we’ve come to know on our spiritual paths. For instance, through love, the greatest transformation and change is possible. Yet, we ought not enter into love with the intention to change one another.
• Love is a perfect relationship to reality as it is, acceptance of the way things are as well as the desire to support growth and change. Zen Nun Cheri Huber expresses this most beautifully when she recommends that those in love embody the sentiment, “I accept you exactly as you are and I will help you to become anything you want to be”.
• The only way we get to experience growth is by being exposed to difficulties which allow us to try, bit by bit, to be bigger, more stable, mature, healthy and joyful in our reactions. To quote His Holiness the Dalai Lama, “For a person who cherishes compassion and love, the practice of tolerance is essential, and for that, an enemy is indispensable. So we should be grateful to our enemies, for it is they who can best help us to develop a tranquil mind.” Ok, I know that this seems to be asking a lot. However, why is this seemingly impossible ideal set? It’s not to be placating to the enemy, it’s because ultimately, it’s what’s best for OUR development, for OUR peace, for OUR sanity. This then, becomes the very basis for being a really great husband or wife. When we come from a place of working with our own neuroses, insecurities and directly connecting with our fears, rather than laying that trip on our spouses, we begin to naturally open and we create a fun, light, playful and loving space for our cherished one. We begin to experience Love, Compassion, Joy and Equanimity as the organic, visceral, practical consequence of touching our own fears and working with them.
• Vows are, by definition, publicly proclaimed intentions to live up to perfect ideals. As we aspire to these ideals, though we ourselves are riddled with our imperfections, our habits, our sheer humanity, we are further deepening our spiritual commitment.
• Recognizing that the external conditions in life will not always be smooth and that internally your own mind and emotions will sometimes get stuck in negativity, do you pledge to see all these circumstances as a challenge to help you grow, to open your hearts, to accept yourselves, and each other; and to generate compassion for others who are suffering? Do you pledge to avoid becoming narrow or closed, and to help each other to see various sides of situations? “We do.”

Best of 2009 Blog Challenge: Best Social Web Moment

A little over a month ago my dear friend Tashi told me that he had discovered a woman’s blog online and that I had to check it out because the amount of similarities between she and I was outrageous. I did and found some: we both adore cupcakes, practice both yoga and meditation, love Project Runway, are quirky, and find travel to be imperative.

Then a few weeks ago Tashi told me to check out a podcast episode that reminded him of me. (She and a close friend of hers have a podcast together. They also own a yoga studio in Japan together.) So I did. The way she related to the topic was very much like I would. I told Tashi that it was indeed funny how similar we seemed to be. He pointed out that he had been listening to all of their podcasts and that he had found that she spoke in a very similar way to me. I told him it was too bad I had just found out about her now that I’m not living in Boulder (that’s where she lives). I encouraged him to meet up with her (but not to upgrade to the newer version of me just because I’m not there).  He had already befriended her on Twitter and Facebook. I started to follow her on Twitter and read on her blog that she was starting a Blog Challenge and decided to participate. (I’m all for self-reflection.)

That same week Tashi tweeted “@SamAhern… And it just keeps getting weirder. @GwenBell quoted Flight of the Conchords on the ZIS episode I just heard!! You 2: Same mold.” Tashi then told me that Gwen had tweeted him asking for us to be introduced. He told her that it wasn’t possible as I wasn’t in Colorado.

I then befriended her on Facebook. I included a message with my friend request, closing with an open invitation to crash in our guest room if she found herself needing a break by the beach. After accepting my friend request (a week ago) she rapidly sent me a few messages noting the similarities and asking if she and her hubby could indeed take me up on the offer to come stay with us in Costa Rica for one of the two weeks they were hoping to come down (three weeks from then). I ran it past Jim, who agreed. I gave them the green light and the tickets were bought.

I’ve only known about this woman for just over a month. I’ve never met her. We clearly have interests that overlap in places (although I am not half as techy as her and I’m not sure I am fearless enough to karaoke). Tashi pointed out that our similarities could either make it be like two long lost friends finally meeting or if could be a major flop. I’m trying to manifest the former. And if it is a flop. So be it. I still love her blog, the way she thinks, how courageous she is, how she attracts success, and how down to earth she is. And at the very least we can talk Boulder, tea, yoga, Tim Gunn, how to do what you love, and traveling a bit. (I do also hope to sort out what it is she actually does too.)

To read Gwen’s take on these events check out her blog post about it.