View From a Supermarket

                The supermarket at Sheppard and Don Mills is teeming with life. I see kale, lettuce, tomatoes, and winter melon in the produce section. In the meat section, I see grey shrimp draped over hills of crushed ice. I see shimmering silver fish darting to and fro in a dark aquarium. Many of the fish appear to be swimming for dear life, particularly the larger fish in the lowest parts of the aquarium. One of the fish gets snapped up by a red-coated clerk and is cleanly but into two, after which the remains are returned to a customer in exchange for money.  People wind around me with dutiful faces and carts full of food. The afternoon winds down into evening.

               

              Life changes in an instant. A decision is made, money is exchanged, and a life is lost. Then the same repeats the next day and the day after. I look into the faces of the fish and wonder whether they have any inkling of what their fate could be, or why they remain confined in a watery prison. Their faces only look sad and eager to gulp in a few breaths of air and find a space among swarms of other fish. There is sadness there. The carcasses line up beside each other, like fellow comrades in battle. One of them frowns philosophically while a man has his fish weighed and wonders whether he will part with his $20 bill. Patrons scramble to shovel piles of shrimp into clear plastic bags. The world continues on its way.

                

                People suffer at times in vain. An example is a situation where I pretend not to hope for something, only to recognize how much I hoped after all when the object of hope disappears. This is a sad occasion, but it happens only so long as I don’t get the message the first time. As long as I am not comparing this thought with the previous thought, there is nothing to regret. So why do I keep accumulating thoughts as ‘plus’ or ‘minus’ and weighing in on which direction I should take? This kind of comparative picking and choosing does not work. No ‘path’ of life can be evaluated this way when nothing is immune to impermanence. So I need to think of another way.

              

              Early in the afternoon, I had this thought: the root of ingratitude is the mind’s habitual tendency to compare one thing to another. If I stopped comparing two thoughts or two situations, there would be no observable conflict between the two, and I could enjoy and appreciate both as they are.  The problem is that people seek ‘the best’ situation, as though there were such a thing as ‘best’ in the first place. In fact, the word ‘best’ is perhaps the most problematic term of all. It entails measurement (see my previous entry) and a progressive synthesis of pitting one thing with or against another. This then creates the illusory third thought, which is actually not a synthesis at all, but is a completely new thought altogether. And here I am thinking: wow, the new and improved thought! Is there such a thing? If I let go of always looking for the new and improved thought, what I am left with is taking the current thought on its own terms, letting it arise and disappear. And this gives me the space to take the situation for what it is without adding new qualifications to it.

                

             Taking things in this way, I cannot help but see each moment in a new way, even if it is not what I want it to be or what I expect it to be. The ultimate gratitude is relaxing in the moment. It is also the insight that this too will pass. In fact, it is precisely this insight into both gratitude and impermanence that I wish the fish could one day learn, in their respective journeys through successive lives and deaths.

              

               May all beings be free of suffering!