"You Will Get the Dharma You Need" - Act One

I have to credit this wonderful catch-phrase to a Buddhist podcast I recently discovered called "Buddhist Geeks." The name is especially endearing because, well...I am pretty close to Geek. Please--don't take this news too hard.

I've sat next to the saying last week. I've held it and examined it. Poked and prodded; pushed and pulled. Spun it around, even. And upon inspecting it, I realized: I like it a lot. The saying reminds me of another one with which I was raised: God will not give you more than you can handle. With our open hands, we are given our share.

Then, a few days later, I read this passage from Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, between the main character, 9-year old Oskar and his father before bedtime:


"So I said, 'Obviously, but why is there gravity?'

He said, 'What do you mean why is there gravity?'

'What's the reason?'

'Who said there had to be a reason?'

'No one did, exactly.'

'My question was rhetorical.'

'What's that mean?'

'It means I wasn't asking it for an answer, but to make a point.'

'What point?'


'That there doesn't have to be a reason.'


'But if there isn't a reason, then why does the universe exist at all?'


'Because of sympathetic conditions.'" (emphasis added)


We exist because of sympathetic conditions--what a beautiful expression. I am beginning to appreciate what both expressions mean.

I have a job for every year that I have contemplated my long-term work-life this summer. Two and a half jobs for two and a half thinking years. It is a different question than a "career-choice," "jobs I should find," or "a way to make money." I want to know how this: given my power to choose, how will work be incorporated into my day-to-day life? I had no significant insight for two and a half years.

I asked myself about meaningful work--how can I best employ my talents and skills into the work that I do? My strengths lie in conceptual analysis suited for brainy sort of work but also, I am physical strong and efficient, a combination suited for moving and organizing things. It has taken me as long to discover what I do well, only to discover that any one of us has the capacity to learn any skill with persistent discipline and a wise approach.

Next, I asked myself about fulfilling work--which kinds of work aligns my spirit, heart, and mind? This answer is complicated by the skills and talents that I identified, until I understood that my fulfillment entirely depended on the last question.

What kinds of work were skillful in a spiritual sense--whether my chosen work were ethical. At the very least, I had not engaged in unethical work (to my knowledge). I confronted the dilemma about choosing the most skillful work--whether my chosen work inflicted the least harm and advanced the most virtue. Community-organizing, for example, "serves"; on the other hand, I learned that it may not be the kind the work that lends itself to "professionalization." I organized to find and strenghten community for which I discovered that earning a living changed the nature of it. I still cannot carve the words, yet I knew that I was unfulfilled.

Multiple jobs may drive some people out of their minds. As fragile as our minds are, it is exactly what I need. It does not follow that we should have single jobs that define who we are. We are and offer many different things so our work should reflect our complex selves. It is interesting that we assume that our work should be reduced into a single paid-job that often defines who we are or our life station. What a story.

Sympathetic conditions are the result of the Universe arranging itself for our best understanding. Conditions have arisen to tell me that I need work-lives--materially compensated or not--that further the Dharma. What will this look like? Probably legal-work, physical labor, spiritual offerings, to sustain "freelance" writing. The possibilities are as wide as this Universe of ours, as I try to re-tell my own work story.

More lessons from the Invisible Truth-Telling Hand in Act Two on bondage, domination/submission, sado-masochism (BDSM) and Buddhism.