False Assumptions
Four people are flying in an airplane, the pilot, a professor, a hiker and another individual. The plane begins to have problems and it become apparent that it will crash. So the pilot announces that there are only three parachutes and that he is going to take one of them. The professor says that since he is so important and brilliant he will take another. The hiker then turns to the other person and says there are still two chutes left, because the professor in all of his brilliance grabbed the hiker’s backpack.
As we go through life how often do we act like the professor, thinking that we have everything figured out? If you are anything like me, perhaps great portions of you life are lived that way, all the way up until something goes wrong. It is easy to go through life thinking that we have all the answers and everything is planned out.
I work in a hospital, visiting people who are sick and even dying. Often people share how unexpected their illness was or impending death is. We go through life planning all sorts of things, frequently based upon the faulty assumption that we are in control.
Sometimes we fail to consider that the most effective plan we can make is the important activity of practicing Buddhism. We can with no certainty predict what the future will be like, even if we live each day with the attitude that we are somehow in control. The most effective thing for our future is the day-to-day practice of Buddhism.
“It is because, if they see me for a long time, they will not plant the roots of good, but become poor and base, and cling to the five desires so much that they will he caught in the nets of wrong views.” (Lotus Sutra, Chapter XVI)
We are in a sense lulled into a false sense of security by the seemingly predictable events of our lives. It is because of this false sense of security, the predictability of the day to day, that we fail to notice the importance of engaging in the one practice that can afford us with the real security of the elimination of suffering.
It is important to note though, that eliminating suffering is not the same as having no problems.
There are time, for certain, that we will experience difficulties in our lives, and while a back pack is important the greatest thing to possess is the parachute.
“The roots of good which they have planted will help them aspire for unsurpassed enlightenment.” (Lotus Sutra, Chapter XVII)
