“The Futility of the Hungry Ghost” from Making the Good Life Last: Four Keys to Sustainable Living by Rev. Michael Schuler, senior minister, First Unitarian Society of Madison, WI
Buddhist teachings describe perpetually dissatisfied, grasping, overanxious people as “hungry ghosts.” As much as they long for happiness and the experience of true contentment, these sad individuals are unenlightened about how an abiding sense of well-being might be secured. Moreover, they haven’t acquired the tools or the self-discipline to tap into these wellsprings of nourishment. The “hungry ghost” subsists, therefore, on the deceptively thin fare its culture provides – easily appropriated pleasures that dull the cravings but do not satisfy them. The habit of happiness, beauty that is more than skin-deep, and trustworthy relationships all lie beyond the ghost’s reach and are usually beyond its ken.
In the Chinese language, the two words pin and tan look very similar on the printed page. The first means “greed,” and the other stands for “poverty”. This, in a nutshell, in the dilemma of the hungry ghost: greedy for experiences and possessions to fill its emptiness; yet for all the effort the ghost expends, it still feels impoverished. The hungry ghost may compensate for its emptiness through the compulsive quest for pleasure and prestige, but it is unlikely to find in such pursuits any antidote for its chronic discontent. This Buddhist metaphor is compelling; it graphically describes a condition that afflicts many Americans.
reading
from The Resilient Spirit: Transforming Suffering into Insight and Renewal by Polly Young-Eisendrath.
Meditators know this from their own experience, but people who have never tried meditating may feel that they are personally “attention deficient” because they are so distractible and unable to focus most of the time. For people in general, only concentration relieves this experience of ordinary mental chaos. When we’re working at something that absorbs our attention or we’re involved in a ritual or doing some other kind of structured activity, we automatically direct our thoughts and we feel better. At most other times, we are held hostage to the jumbled array of unfocused stuff that rolls through our minds.
In addition to the chaotic and random qualities of our ordinary thoughts, our natural attitude is quite negative: “The roaming mind usually attends to negative thoughts” and “such a pessimistic basis might be adaptive – if by ‘adaptation’ we mean an increased likelihood of survival. The mind turns to negative possibilities as a compass needle turns to the magnetic pose, because this is the best way, on the average, to anticipate dangerous situations.”
This natural dissatisfaction, as the Buddha discovered in his awakening to the true nature of our lives, is always in the background for humans. It is probably connected with our being constantly alert to an opportunity to improve things, a sort of instinctual negativity that leads to greater and greater competence. Such a generally negative attitude may be useful for the species as a whole but is often problematic for the individual. It disrupts our ability to concentrate directly on our actions and tends to keep our attention on evaluations of whether or not we like what’s happening.
My sermons are never quite what I want them to be,” I might have been telling my therapist. “My vision is always so much bigger than the finished product.” Or maybe I was telling her my marriage was not quite what I had pictured it would be back when our love was fresh and new like spring. Or it could be I was bemoaning my utter inadequacies as a parent, where I fail almost daily in some way or another to live up to my ideals of patience and attentiveness. Or it might have been any number of the other ways in which I see myself as not quite “enough”: smart enough, skilled enough, brave enough, thoughtful enough, wise enough, generous enough, dedicated enough, ambitious enough … I could go on (but that is enough). I no longer remember the subject matter of this particular conversation with my therapist. What I remember is this: She said to me, “It is hard being a perfectionist, isn’t it?” I ga-fawed at her, “I’m not a perfectionist! I’m no where near good enough to be a perfectionist!!” And then, graced in that moment with some rare, wonderful, lightness of being, I heard what I had said, heard the words that had come out of my very own mouth, and I burst into laughter. So did my therapist.
I find Polly Young-Eisendrath’s notion that my inherent dissatisfaction is actually a universal human adaptation for survival so very comforting. It is not a personal, psychological flaw, this inability to be satisfied with things as they are. My ancestors – and your ancestors – are the ones who were never satisfied with the clothing or food or shelter that they had. They were always trying to make it better. And because they DID make it better, they survived better.
But what is adaptive for a species as a whole in one era of time might turn out to be pretty hard on individuals, and might eventually have some surprisingly bad consequences when times have changed.
I am not, by any means, alone in being such a master of dissatisfaction. It would be hard to be alive in the United States today – and in much of the developed world – without either falling into the grips of or struggling mightily to stay out of the grips of “dissatisfaction.” Experiencing the Hungry Ghost phenomenon isn’t foreign to any of us. The “Average American” encounters an average of 600 advertisements each day, or 3000, depending on what source you read, 3000 being the most often cited number. Either way, it’s a lot. And these ads are, by their very nature, designed to create or reinforce a sense of dissatisfaction because advertisers know that satisfied, happy people don’t buy much. So, somewhere between 600 and 3000 times a day we encounter messages that tell us: our houses are not big enough, our iPods are not small enough, our cheekbones are not high enough, our hair is too grey. Our clothes are not fashionable enough, our lawns are not green enough, our food is not pure enough, our cars guzzle too much gas. Our bank accounts, our businesses, our economy, are not growing fast enough. Even our giving is not generous enough.
What happens to us when we swim in the sea of inadequacy, when we breathe the air of ‘not enough’s,’ when we drink from the well of dissatisfaction, when we cannot turn off the whispers of “more, bigger, as good as it can be”? To me it is like being slowly poisoned. I begin to question my priorities, it grows into discontent, it sometimes takes hold as a blanket of depression that so thoroughly cocoon’s me I forget there are other ways of being. Far from being motivated to improve myself or my world, I end up paralyzed by that cocoon, hopeless that I will ever find the elusive bird of paradise. I become the Hungry Ghost. This trait that meant bodily survival to my ancient ancestors is like spiritual death to me.
But what if I could taste the blessing of all I have and all I have received? What would it mean to be satisfied with who one is and the way things are? What would it be like to live without forever wanting one’s life to be more, bigger, as good as it can be?
Here is a wonderful story by John Shea, a Catholic theologian and story teller. It’s called “The Obedient and the Disobedient Servants.”
A king had two servants. He told the first servant to do something. The servant did it, and was promoted. He told the second servant to do something. The servant did not do it, and was fired.
The servant who was promoted lived very, very well in the king’s service, and continued to obey the king and be promoted. One day, however, his thoughts turned to the servant who had disobeyed the king and been fired. So he went to visit him.
He arrived at the house where the man used to live, but he was no longer there. A neighbor said he had sold the house and moved to a much smaller one.
When the first servant arrived at the place where the second servant now lived, he realized that ‘house’ was too kind a word. It was a hovel. The first servant knocked on the door, and a voice said, ‘Come in!”
The second servant was sitting on the dirt floor eating a very, very thin soup.
The servant who had been promoted smiled. “If you had learned to obey the king, you would not have to eat that thin soup,’ he said.
The servant who had been fired replied, ‘If you had learned how to eat this soup, you would not have to obey the king!’
The story never says it, but I get the sense that the servant who was fired is perhaps happier in his life and with his choices than the servant who had dedicated himself to obeying the king. Like so many of us, like the Hungry Ghost, the Obedient servant has a full belly but seems starved for the blessing of what he has eaten.
I don’t mean this to glorify poverty. There is nothing glorious about not having enough food to eat, about loosing ones livelihood or ones home. I DO mean to glorify the freedom to choose how we will live. “What we want and what we are given often serve two different Gods,” says poet Mark Nepo. “How we respond to their meeting determines our path.” What we want and what we are given often serve two different gods. How we respond to their meeting determines our path.
Strange and wondrous things began happening when I started praying that prayer, saying that mantra: “may I be satisfied, may I be satisfied.” One evening, talking with my spouse about his workload and his drive to excel, I found myself speaking with gentle honesty and listening with openness and compassion. Thinking about the conversation ahead of time, I had expected an eruption of frustration and anger – from me – but it never came. Nothing very noticeable has changed in Charles’ work habits. I keep practicing being satisfied with what is.
Which god will we serve? What path will we take? Such profound questions follow me from intimate conversation with my spouse to the isles of Target. Let’s talk about those melamine plates. Plates may not be your thing, but I bet you have a thing. Some little item that always catches your eye, something you can never get enough of: scarves, I also love; Charles likes blue shirts, has a closet and a dresser full of them; my sister’s mother-in-law – anything with a penguin on it. Some people can’t resist the call of a new novel, though it will be read and done with in just a week or two. They are things that are not so important to talk about because they are things, for this sermon isn’t about materialism and simplicity. Rather, this is a sermon about our loves and our lives. And plates, for me, are a window into understanding how I am pulled in to the magnetic field of desire.
Why do I love these plates so much? Because I love to have fun, funky, colorful things around the house. And each year the designs seem more fun, funky and colorful than the previous year and so I want those, too, because I want the most current and hip iteration of fun, funky and colorful. I have a dozen of these plates, now, two or three of each pattern colorfull-ing up my cupboard and table. A dozen is enough for a family of three so two years ago we agreed I would stop buying, cold turkey. I still go to the melamine plate isle at Target or Meijer or anywhere I get a chance. I ohh and ahh over the new designs. They are more modern, sophisticated and interesting, it seems, than the designs I have. “Maybe we need placemats,” I think, trying on that logic. Then I realize I am trying to buy the life I see advertised 600 (or 3000) times a day. Easy. Beautiful. Full of time to relax, go on picnics, and make every meal look like a work of art. I take a deep breath, practice satisfaction, and leave without the placemats.
Maybe you respond to these stories like my friend did: “But, but, but … that would mean everything is OK the way it is,” she said to me. “Don’t you want your life to be as good as it can be?” I do. I really do. But there is magic in stopping the evaluations and accepting what is. I call it magic because I still don’t entirely understand what happens within me or how to explain the personally profound results of my simple prayer.
Nothing changed with Charles after that conversation, except this: At the beginning of our conversation it was as though I had been sitting opposite him, confronting him, adversaries in a cosmic fight over priorities in which mine were obviously the right ones. By the end of this conversation in which nothing really changed, it was as though I was sitting next to him, both of us heading in the same direction, determining our path together. Not such a big thing. But magical. Profound. Satisfying.
It has been said many times that if you get to the root of any religion, you’ll find there the teaching to “love one another.” If there is any teaching as common across the religions of the world as the advice to “love one another,” I think it is the teaching to pay attention. It comes in lots of different guises from dedicated solitary practice to highly orchestrated corporate ritual: Hindus, for example, place daily offerings of fruit and flowers near gates, doorways and shrines (wherever there is an opening) in their homes and throughout the city to feed and thank the spirits. Muslims stop whatever they are doing five times a day to pray, giving praise to God and asking to be guided in the right path. Jews and Christians give thanks before meals, monastics pray without ceasing. Buddhists practice mindfulness and wash the dishes to wash the dishes. It is all the same teaching: focus your mind, direct your thoughts and stop the mental chaos that holds you hostage to evaluations and judgments, pay attention to what IS right now.
In fact, paying attention is the first “key” Rev. Schuler gives for “making the good life last.”
“Taoism,” he writes, “teaches that by fully attending to things as they are, we can enjoy a harmonious relationship with the Tao – that ineffable, all-pervading principle that governs and gives coherence to the cosmos. In the process, we gain the ability to move through life mindfully, with ever-greater poise and equanimity and free from the need to be always “in control” of others and the environment.” P. 31.
Perhaps praying to be satisfied shifted my attention from what isn’t to what is. I have become more able to look cheerfully and appreciatively upon many different areas of my life. And in looking, I found them good. Not always great, but good. Good enough to be satisfying. So any improvement, well that would be icing on the cake. Nice, and worth working for, but not necessary for a fundamentally happy outlook. “What we want and what we are given often serve two different Gods. How we respond to their meeting determines our path.”
Will you walk the path of the Hungry Ghost, that graphic description, Rev. Schuler says, of “a condition that afflicts many Americans?” Or will you choose another way. Can you choose to taste the blessing and be filled?
The word "blessing" (says Catholic monk Brother David Steindl-Rast) is related in English to the word "blood." Blessing is like the spiritual bloodstream that flows through the universe. When we bless something we are returning what we have received to its source. We know we receive life and breath from a source which is beyond us. We haven't bought it or earned it. We are just put here and life comes to us from some mysterious source, and we can give it back. That is like the blood coming from the heart and going back to the heart. That blood keeps on flowing and if we tune in to the bloodstream of blessing the world comes alive. The same thing happens if we cut off the bloodstream or drain the sap from a tree; life withers. … The gifts or blessings of life are always there but if we are not aware of them, they don't do much for us. (from the interview “Practicing Gratitude” at www.gratefulness.org.)
I picture Jesus at the water’s edge accompanied by his disciples and surrounded by the crowds. Everyone knows that five loaves of bread and two fish aren’t possibly enough to feed everyone. And yet Jesus goes ahead anyway. He lifts those loaves and fishes up to heaven as though to remind everyone that whatever we have, whatever we receive, is a gift from a source beyond our control. And Jesus blesses those simple gifts, he breaks them and shares them. Such simple acts, and such profound ones. For they called the people’s attention away from the jumble of thoughts that bombard one’s mind in idle moments and focused them on the gift they were about to receive. And so focused, they were able to taste the blessing, and be filled.
Being satisfied won’t create more jobs. Being satisfied won’t create bigger paychecks. Being satisfied won’t even heal the earth, though it is a good beginning.
But … In practicing satisfaction we might discover
That small can be beautiful,
That enough really is enough,
And that imperfection is the doorway that opens us to mystery and wonder.
Being satisfied just might remind us how truly delicious life is.
May it be so. May we make it so through our living.
