It was Wednesday afternoon and I’d already been in Las Vegas for four very long days. I’d just wrapped up my final presentation of the week and with the applause from the audience, came a feeling of relief as months of pressure instantly evaporated. As I made my way back to my room, I weaved my way through the crowds and thought about what a crazy week it had been. I was just grateful to have a couple of moments where I could just breathe. A few minutes later as I approached the waterfall atrium in the Palazzo, I had a startling revelation, seemingly out of the blue.
I realized that everyone I was looking at had once been a child, filled with innocent hopes and dreams. But as I looked closer at each of them, I noticed a heaviness in their bearing and then a sadness in their eyes. In some cases, it was subtle but compared to the presence and curiosity of a child, it was there. As I thought about this, I realized that all of these “children” had been transformed from essentially perfect beings into the monstrosities before me by constant exposure to pain and suffering. Upon this realization, I immediately felt an overwhelming amount of compassion for everyone that I walked past, it was beautiful and terrifying.
At this point everything started to slow down and even sounds seemed to become muffled, my footsteps slowed and I proceeded through the atrium with the feeling that I was the only one who could see the dualistic nature of the sadness behind the beauty and the beauty behind the sadness. As I walked out of the Atrium and into the casino, I tried to keep this awareness alive by looking deeply into every pair of eyes I could find, to see if the pain really was the same everywhere. And then I realized I was probably freaking everyone out so I stopped doing that and continued up to my room…
Later, I realized this experience was caused by a number of factors including; the books I had recently been reading (“The Mastery of Love” and “Siddhartha”), the “Four Marks of Existence” class I had just completed, and the experiences I’d had throughout the week, but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.
The Final Four Marks of Existence class
After the lecture, we were instructed to meditate on what being awake meant to us and for me the image of water going over the edge of a waterfall came to mind. The water rushing by represented my thoughts. I imagined I was sitting just above the edge of the waterfall watching my thoughts go over the edge. I found that if I focused on a particular thought as it went by, I’d get sucked over the edge and down into the frothing water below. I realized for me, to be awake is to sit above the waterfall and observe the thoughts go by without being sucked over the edge.
The final instruction to the class was to “summarize what the class meant to you using only one word”. For me the word “suffering” (the first mark of existence) immediately came to mind and despite making multiple attempts, I couldn’t come up with something “better”. The problem was, I didn’t “like” my word, and my dislike of it only increased as the others revealed their very elegant, and usually ultra-spiritual, words. Eventually it was my turn and I when I said “suffering” one of my teachers responded with an enigmatic “ah” which I interpreted as “ah, what a dumb choice” (Clearly I have unresolved issues with this teacher!) J Afterward I felt ashamed for choosing suffering as my word (because it was so obvious) but I consoled myself by acknowledging that it felt like the authentic choice. I left the Zendo feeling a bit overwhelmed but ready to put what I had learned into practice.
Or so I thought.
What I didn’t realize at the time was the extent of the impact that the class had had on me. It’s hard to put it into words, but ever since the end of the first class I’d felt emotionally “raw”. Sort of like everything that I experienced was having a larger impact on me than it otherwise normally would. However, since I was in the home stretch of my preparations for an upcoming industry conference, I didn’t really have a chance to mentally unpack what was going on, I just kind of deferred intentionally thinking about it.
Welcome to Las Vegas!
The trip out to Las Vegas was actually very nice. I even managed to read a short book that my sister Suzanne had given me called Siddhartha (by Hermann Hesse). She’d given it to me when she found out I was starting to seriously investigate Buddhism. Essentially, it’s a fictional story about the life of a young man who had set out to become “enlightened” and the book followed the course of his life. The key takeaway for me was the concept that our lives are like rivers and that time is an illusion. As a result we are the child, adolescent, adult and elder all at the same time. Therefore, we don’t need to become something to be happy (we are already a fully realized being) we just have to accept what we are. Given my meditation on Awakening during the final class, and how the image of a waterfall came to me, I found the fact that the book ended with such a powerful revelation about life and its relationship to a river, an interesting bit of synchronicity.
During the flight I also continued reading a book that another friend had recommended titled “The Mastery of Love” by Don Miguel Ruiz and I’ve been reading this one slowly because it’s one of those books that requires a ton of reflection and should be savored not gulped. That said, the key take away from this book (so far) has been; we start out life as perfect beings and through experience with older humans, we acquire imperfections which he refers to as wounds. These wounds impact how we interact with others and lead to the acquisition of yet additional wounds.
Both of these books obviously played a significant role in my experience at the Waterfall Atrium but there’s much more to the story than that.
I finally arrived at my hotel on Saturday afternoon. On my way to the room I noticed there was a “Juice farm” and was psyched to see that they sold smoothies because I knew I wouldn’t starve due to a lack of Vegan options. I was also able to locate a Walgreens which sold Almond milk and several other of my “essentials”. I grabbed dinner at the Grand Lux and got a tofu based dish that was actually freaking amazing. I ended up crashing around 9:00.
A leisurely stroll…
On Sunday I woke up at 3:00 AM and couldn’t fall back to sleep, so I got up did my normal Yoga practice and then decided to go for a walk. I wasn’t sure where to go, so I left the Palazzo and headed towards the Wynn via the foot bridge.
As I started to cross, I was immediately confronted by an older panhandler (presumably homeless by his appearance) who had a cup out and had a sign that said “Hungry”. I immediately felt incredibly uncomfortable and my stride which was confident and purposeful just a moment before, broke into several hesitating steps before I tried to just plow past him (which is exactly what I would normally do). However, as I started to walk by, I felt compelled to make eye contact with him (because, I mean it wouldn’t be “compassionate” to just walk by without at least acknowledging his existence) and when we made eye contact the look of suffering and contempt that was returned literally took my breath away. I somehow managed to continue walking and even temporarily shook off the experience as an “anomaly”.
Just about the time I was feeling a bit better I came across another person sitting on the ground by the sidewalk. This guy was a bit younger and he had no interest in being acknowledged nor was he panhandling or even holding a sign. But the look on his face was filled with hopelessness and despair.
Yet another man a hundred feet later gave me a look of such incredible hatred that I thought for a second he was preparing to physically assault me.
At this point, I realized that outside of the Stratosphere (over a mile away), there wasn’t really that much else up ahead so I decided to head back in the other direction. Pretty much as soon as I turned around I noticed a guy stumbling down the sidewalk and headed straight at me with his eyes closed. He was swerving from side to side on the sidewalk and just before we collided I faked right but went left and was somehow (miraculously) able to make it around him without actually touching him. As I looked back at him, I got the impression that the stumbling was an act because he was looked back at me like “DAMN! That big guy can move!”
As I continued to retrace my steps, I reverted back to my “pretend I don’t see them” mode of operation thinking it’s much easier this way.
This strategy sort of worked for the next 25 minutes as I wound my way up to the Bellagio and back. I was actually starting to feel pretty good until I started to walk over a footbridge near the Paris. About this time, I noticed a woman in a wheelchair with a pathetic looking little white dog on her lap. I inadvertently made eye contact with her and don’t have words to describe what I saw. I suspect it’s because the emotion she was feeling is something I’ve never experienced before and was so far outside of my range of experience that I could not relate to her other than the fact that she clearly needed help. I actually wanted to help her, but I didn’t stop. I immediately felt shitty for not doing something and the further away I walked from her, the worse I felt. As I continued my walk back to the hotel, there were several other broken people, but by this point I really wasn’t paying attention, I couldn’t get image of the woman and her dog out of my mind and I couldn’t believe that I’d left someone in that state without at least saying something.
Upon reaching my hotel, I managed to robotically order my smoothie at the “Juice Farm” and get a coffee at “the Coffee Bean” before I returned to my room. I sat down on the couch took a sip of my smoothie and then pretty much completely lost my shit.
OM
So this next part of the story is difficult to tell, but when I started this blog I decided I would be as honest as possible and what happened next is an integral part of the story, so here goes.
I’m pretty sure I was on the verge of having a nervous breakdown. I just couldn’t get the image of the woman with the dog out of my head. I was deeply ashamed that I didn’t do something to help her or any of the others. I mean what’s the point of working on suffering and compassion (never mind deciding that your life’s purpose is to “help”) if you don’t do something to help when you see the need for it? The longer I sat there the worse I felt. I felt like I was in a downward spiral into a bottomless pit and decided that I would try to meditate and see if I could unpack what was going on. While I was trying to get centered and focus on my breath, nothing was working and I was starting to panic. By now, tears were freely streaming down both cheeks and out of sheer desperation I decided to do something I had never tried before, I used OM. Like as in OMMMM
I started out sub-vocally because it felt like such a strange thing to do (upon reflection, it really was), but eventually I started to quietly say it out loud and as soon as I did, I discovered that OM has the most wonderful calming effect. It was sort of like I was sending an emergency distress signal out to the universe and the reverberations of this signal we’re causing me to calm down. Encouraged by this bit of success I continued, and by the time I was done I wasn’t quite shaking the walls, but I’m sure the neighbors were wondering what the hell was going on.
As I finally started to reconnect with my breath, I started to understand that everything that had happened over the previous few weeks and even months (and I described in my previous blog posts about the Four Marks) had been preparing me for this moment. As soon as I realized this, I felt the most amazing sensation of grace, peace, love, it felt like the universe had me cradled in a blanket and was (and had been) taking care of my every need.
While focused on my breath I was able to start peeling back the layers surrounding my reluctance to help the woman with the dog. I eventually realized that at some level I was judging her as unworthy of help because at some level I believed that she was responsible for her predicament and that she was choosing to live this way. I realized how unfair my judgment was but didn’t know how to move past this prejudice. I eventually needed to come back to reality and complete my preparations for my presentation.
The rest of the day was uneventful, but the feeling of unease was still there, lurking just below the surface.
Ah HA!
Monday morning I woke up at 3:30 and in the fog of grogginess I realized that a solution had been worked out while I slept. I realized that many people come to Vegas and walk around putting money into random slot machines or betting at game tables in order to have a chance of winning some money. I assume they believe winning will bring them some form of happiness. However, the odds are always against them and even if they win, then what?
So I figured since I don’t gamble, why don’t I just go around and give a small amount of money to random people who need it and have a 100% chance of making us both feel somewhat better?
So that’s exactly what I did. I got up, ran through my normal morning routine, and then set out with the intention to “help” someone.
As I describe in my next post this turned out to be an interesting idea.
Namaste!
