This is one of the more famous verses from Krishna's lecture to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu scripture which outlines the essential actions, practices and yogas of living a path of spiritual realization. Many of the lessons offer clear instructions on how to better oneself in service of others, and by transitive property the all-pervading divine consciousness (or God, as some might say). As explored in some of my previous posts, this is the idea that service to one is service to all. Letting go of the personal attachments of the ego and, specifically, desires is key to this central teaching of Sri Krishna. Therefore, in order to evolve spiritually, one must learn to overcome attachment to both the desired outcomes of actions and the expectation of "perfect" results.
According to the above verse, focusing heavily on sense objects will lead to attachments, which leads to desires, which leads to anger. Kind of a simple progression to follow. However, I always forget that "sense objects" are not always some sort of external thing that is coveted or craved. These can just as easily be a mental picture or idea of the way life should be or how others should act or treat us. It can be a comparison to some existing ideal or an ideal that we create in our minds. In my experience, constantly striving for this type of "sense object" leads to not only stress and anxiety, but also to attachment to a single narrow idea of what should be. From this, desire for only that thing rises. This adds another layer of expectations, which isn't specifically mentioned in the verse. Then, if what I desire doesn't happen or isn't as perfect as imagined I begin to get angry. It is a pretty vicious mental cycle, that I have luckily been able to realize and, for the most part, break over the past handful of year.
Though the verse is taken from the Bhagavad Gita, it is a timeless teaching, echoed in teachings of many other Eastern religions; namely Buddhism and Jainism. Having begun to practice Buddhism 7-8 years ago, it was not hard to make the leap to the teachings of Hinduism that expound the same essential knowledge in a different contextual framework. Additionally, the foundation to these spiritual lessons were also very easy to understand, as they were pretty much a formalized presentation of what I learned from training Laika when she was a puppy (but it appears that she also trained me in many more important things).
When I started taking care of Laika, she had massive leash anxiety (probably as a result of being loose on the street for much of her younger days). Anytime she was on leash she was pulling in every direction possible and would get extremely vocal when she saw any dog or other animal (especially other dogs and squirrels). Having volunteered with shelter dogs for many years, I had an idea of how Laika should behave on leash, but these expectations were not even close to being met. Everyday, I would dread taking her outside, which was necessary because we lived in an apartment without a private yard. I could tell that she was not comfortable, but I kept pushing her to fit my idea of how she should act. She would cry and carry-on and "misbehave" as I would try to walk her with passersby looking on in horror (and covering their ears). All the while, my anger level would grow. (A fact I am not proud of, but didn't have the knowledge and tools to deal with at the time.)
At first I blamed her as though she has some sort of problem or secret desire that kept her from wanting to be like "good" dogs. I constantly compared her to my friends' dogs that were champion walkers and didn't disturb the peace each time that they walked down the street. Throughout this, I projected my own desires for what should be onto her, which was completely unfair to her and a completely unjust basis for my anger. I sometimes yelled at her or tried to physically restrain her, which didn't help matters. It only compounded them and made her more anxious. After months of this ordeal (and a few times that Laika slipped her harness and put herself in danger), I finally decided to get the help of a professionally dog trainer.
As luck would have it, the trainer that I chose was a completely wonderful human being and introduced me to positive reinforcement training. One of the things that our trainer (yes, I was being trained, too) Lilian taught us was that behaviors wouldn't improve unless anxiety was decreased. She also noted that the leash is a conduit for feelings, so my growing anger and frustration were directly affecting poor Laika. This led to using Laika's favorite treat (peanut butter, later cheese) as an incentive to calm her during extreme bouts of leash anxiety. Gradually, we both learned that the worst could be averted in this manner. Awareness on my part was the key to making this work. In order for that to happen, I had to let go of what I thought should happen on walks and be more in tune with Laika's feelings and what was happening.
This was an important lesson in both empathy, by listening to Laika and myself, and also letting go of the desires for Laika to be a perfect dog and my unrealistic expectations that completely disregarded her personality, experience and needs. After the first lesson, Laika was already able to be a bit more calm on leash and it showed me that my anger was not in any way caused by her. It was a direct manifestation of my desires rising from my attachment to how I thought Laika should be. Over the next few months (and years), she and I worked continuously on trying to take walks in the moment with constant awareness of how things were, thus lessening both of our levels of anxiety.
With all of our work together, Laika's leash issues became less of a problem for her over the years. She learned to be more comfortable, but was never perfect and sometimes had relapses given certain stimuli. However, I rarely reverted to the anger and frustration that I earlier felt due to my attachment to expectations. (In truth, much like Laika, I have also never been perfect in any respect.) But, we were both able to learn and grow together while reaching an understanding free from the oppression of what I projected on our relationship. This was one of the most important lessons that Laika taught me and then reinforced over and over again. Anger is not caused by others (especially loved-ones), it is our own internal reaction to the dissonance between our desires and deceptive ideas of should-ness.
This is a universal lesson; one that I now employ in every aspect of my life. Most of the time it works, but I still have problems with focusing on expectations for certain things. Each day with Laika, though, I was able to practice renouncing these mental attachments and unfair comparisons to some sort of perfect reality (that only exists in the mind). Not only has this allowed me to grow spiritually as a person, but it has lessened my own anxiety and increased my ability to empathically connect to others. My relationship with many others has been enriched by this knowledge and practice that was cultivated throughout my days spent with Laika. Lessons like this are known to be freely given by those who are the most spiritually developed. I think that speaks volumes for Laika's profound influence on my life.
No comments:
Post a Comment