Be Like the Buddha?

What does this saying mean? To be like the buddha…do I need to leave home and wander for decades in search of self and spiritual enlightenment? Do I need to give away all my worldly possessions and ‘just be”?
In our lives, we are involved in stressful situations, relationships, and work environments. We often have emotional responses to events, especially when they are negative or perceived as negative to us. We can have huge stress and anxiety reactions, panic attacks, hives, viral outbreaks. Our internal stress responses often manifest themselves in physical ways to show us how bad we are being affected.

When I think about begin like the Buddha, I try to maintain what he called the attitude of a “dispassionate observer”. What is that? A dispassionate observer is someone who does not invest emotionally into a situation. This person is not concerned with the outcome, so they have no reaction, good or bad, to whatever happens. Some might argue an emotional investment is necessary to motivate one to get to a particular place or position. If you don’t get emotional, you’ll never win an NBA championship. You won’t “win” the argument with your partner. You won’t “get ahead” in business.

To me, emotion is our Achilles heel. It’s our “super weakness”. Emotion makes us do crazy things, things we regret. Emotion makes us say words that can’t be taken back. As I told my grown son one day after he did just that (said the words..), “Children, fueled by emotion, speak words that can’t be taken back. They seek to hurt, because they hurt. A grown up, using logic, realizes sometimes words need to be tempered, or withheld.” While hurtful words may seem to alleviate the pain of the sayer, they cause far greater damage without, than if they were not spoken.

Likewise, replacing our emotional reaction to situations with a logical examination and response, we become a dispassionate observer. By psychically backing away from stress situations, we can see the bigger picture and better understand they hold little to no power over us. As we all know we cannot control what happens to us, only our response to it. This is where an objective, nonemotional perspective will help us better navigate the seas of our lives. It’s like being on a giant cruise ship versus a tiny rowboat. The waves that can capsize a rowboat barely, if at all, felt by those on a cruise ship. Once you expand your objectivity and reduce your capacity to become emotionally engaged in every situation, event, or relationship that comes along (think waves), you’ll be on that cruise ship.

Quick tip: Every time you get emotionally triggered about anything, think about how it is helping you navigate the situation. The key word is “helping”. If it isn’t, practice releasing all emotion tied to it, and look at it, or the people involved, objectively. Why might they act like that? What are their motivations? Their coping skills? Their emotional intelligence? Once you understand that the emotional deficiencies of others has nothing to do with you, you can learn to not allow anyone or anything to affect your emotions. Its’s a mild, even loving form of, “IDGAF”. IFKYK.

It is very hard to set aside our emotions, especially in situations we perceive as negative or hurtful to us. If we can reduce our emotional investment in events and relationships in our life, we will reduce the degree to which these things knock us off our path. Our path is continual growth, enlightenment, and ultimately internal (and external) peace.

Love one, love all