Love Dharma. Geri Larkin

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СКАЧАТЬ time and energy on their spiritual work . . . 6

      There is something about betrayal that destroys a relationship in its heart. I’ve seen, been with, and lived through forgiving people who’ve crossed that boundary. To this day I remain convinced that things are never quite the same afterward, even when the couple agrees to move through a healing process for the sake of the marriage or relationship. If I am in a relationship that is a partnership, my partner and I need to openly, publicly, and loudly commit to virtue and act accordingly. If we can’t, then we have to stop pretending we’re in a committed, intimate relationship, because we aren’t.

      Virtue is tough. Loyalty can suck. Attractive people are everywhere. Sex and sensual pleasures are in the air. When we feel ourselves drawn away from our partner it is critical to ask ourselves, just as the ancient women did: What really matters? If we discover we can’t stay steady, then commit to getting out of the partnership or reframing it as friendship. At least stop pretending that we are being “pure and virtuous” when we aren’t. I hate to think of the karmic consequences of that particular dance.

      May I Be Patient. May I Bear and Forbear the Wrongs of Others

      One of the great surprises of partnerships like Ambapali’s is that we can be more patient with our partners. Back in the days when I only knew complete dependency as a marriage model, every wrong move on the part of my husband made me impatient. He wasn’t perfect. I was concerned. Concern morphed into irritation pretty quickly. On days when all I had to look forward to was watching the four toddlers I baby-sat, even small irritations grew into marriage-threatening themes. That’s what dependency does.

      With independence we can shrug off irritations, because they are only one part of this parade we call life. We don’t have hours to dwell on nuances of meaning, because our days are filled with other people, places, and things. I watch my friend Deborah with her partner, Drew. They have been in love for about three years now. Their public displays of affection continue unabated. Deborah is, by nature, not a patient woman. She makes decisions quickly and doesn’t take any flak from the contractors who share her world. She isn’t a woman you would expect to be patient with a partner. And yet she is.

      Dinners he’s late for, forgotten phone calls, miscues about rendezvous are shrugged off without much more than a grimace. She has plenty to keep her busy, and every surprise loss in their plans to be together becomes an opportunity for her to fill that time slot with a different activity she enjoys—reading, gardening, cooking.

      For their first year together I wondered about her flexibility and willingness to keep pretty much all irritations on an “it’s no big deal” plane. Over time I’ve noticed that her patience and willingness to bear and forbear both of their mistakes has somehow transformed Drew’s behavior. He is late less often and calls when he says he will. Surprise bouquets of flowers and garden tools appear. After three years he remains head over heels in love with this independent woman, cowgirl boots, pickup, and all.

      Patience. One of my best friends in the whole world, Alice, has been married to the same man for almost thirty years, I think. She had heard about him before they met—he was the wild man of their overlapping friendship circle. Finally, at a toga party, they were introduced. That he wasn’t wearing anything under the toga was an added bonus, she says. At the time, Alice was a Victorian beauty with porcelain skin, fathomless eyes, and waist-long hair. In the years they have been together they have been through just about everything two people can go through. What has struck me the entire time has been their patience with each other, and with the relationship. Even at her most frustrated, Alice only has kind things to say about her husband. To this day, he would lie down and die for her. I’m sure of it.

      When I ask Alice how they’ve made it this far, her answer is always “patience,” even when she doesn’t actually say the word. She talks about waiting out the tough times because, in the end, they are both good people who love each other. Hearing her, I think of all the times I’ve shrugged off relationships because of impatience. Times got a little rough—or worse, boring. (This is all pre-Zen, of course!) Patience would have helped me through my Cinderella reactions to imperfect partners. It would have helped me to stay put long enough to see what someone was really like behind the crisis of the moment.

      At the same time, patience protects us when we let go of relationships that just plain don’t work. When my Aussie husband made it clear that he couldn’t live in the United States—for valid reasons—and I had the courage to say I couldn’t immigrate with my then preteen daughter, we both knew our marriage wasn’t going to make it. Because he is patient and because I love him, we were able to unweave the marriage, annul it actually, in a way that protected our friendship. To this day, if I ever make it to Queensland, his is the phone number I’ll call for suggestions for places to stay, eat, and surf.

      May I Be Energetic and Persevering

      When I was at Deloitte and Touche, an international management consulting and accounting firm, there was a manager, Allison, who always struck me as being a natural-born leader. A young, athletic-bodied woman, she made decisions quickly and easily, didn’t take criticisms personally, and took on the toughest assignments with something that looked suspiciously like eagerness. Much of the time, her assignments kept her away from her husband day and night, for weeks at a time.

      One day I asked her how her husband dealt with her absences. I knew the track record for marriages of female management consultants wasn’t good. Earlier that morning I had sat in on a managers’ meeting and noted that, while all the men were married, all the women, except Allison, were single. Most of us had been married but weren’t anymore. One of the younger women—bright and beautiful just so you know—had never been in a long-term relationship. And there was Allison. So I was curious.

      She told me her husband was completely supportive of her work. They had a real partnership, she said. When I asked how this was possible, she responded that it had to do with ho they met. Three years earlier, overweight, she had decided to ride a bike across the country, east to west, as her way of slimming down. Along the way she met her husband. Although he didn’t need to lose weight, he was also riding a bike cross-country. For the first few states she didn’t like him at all, but it was safer to be with another person. Plus, her energy and effort were going into the biking.

      By the second batch of states they were friends, working hard together, still concentrating on the bikes. By Colorado she was in love. When they hit California he asked her to marry him. What brought them together was their shared energetic effort. It was a surprise aphrodisiac. Physically putting all of themselves into the trip was just plain sexy.

      I see it all the time at retreats. People who might never notice one another on the street or in a different environment are working side by side. Maybe it’s scrubbing floors or sanding them. Maybe it’s composting or building stupas together. Whatever the task, the energy put into it has a way of transforming interactions. People fall in love. Allison stayed in love because she continued to put the bike ride energy into her marriage. So when she and her husband were together, they focused on each other and usually did something athletic together, like hike, climb, or ride. And they remembered how much they cared about each other: enough to give each other the space of work independence.

      There is something quite wonderful about putting lots of energy into the known aspects of our lives: “I spent the entire work period every day at an exercise session. . . . I did back bends and stretches while changing the linen; I twisted my body rhythmically to sweep floors; I hung sequentially from each vertebra in my back to scour the toilet; I squeezed the Windex bottle with all five fingers, alternating my hands to wash the windows. I breathed fully and deeply to set a rhythm for my body movements. After a few weeks of this activity I was exhilarated and bursting with energy.” 7

      Virya, energy, is just plain appealing. СКАЧАТЬ