Anicca

As I walk to work, I pick up trash. Why I chose to start doing this is lost in the mists of time, but now it is simply part of what I do—I would no more leave the house without my trash-picking gloves than I would without my pants.

As I walk to work, I practice metta (lovingkindness). I first list all those whom I wish to include in my good wishes: friends, family, neighbors, pets, coworkers, difficult people. I include a broader and broader range of beings as I go, eventually including in my well-wishing all beings, everywhere. At the end, I include myself.

I am somewhat limited in the routes to work, but I have a few options. Some of them are more trash-strewn than others. Most days, these feel like the right place to be, where I can do the most good. On some days, it is far too discouraging to walk there, in places where I have, over the years, picked up a ton or two of trash, yet are sometimes still blanketed with it.

When I have completed my litany of those in my circle of loving wishes, I wish for them these things:

May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you be free of suffering.
May you know the end of pain and fear.
May your hearts be open.
May you live in unconditional friendliness.
May you live with ease.
May you know peace.

It would be a miracle, of course, if even one of these came to anyone in its totality. The idea that we could be thoroughly happy or entirely well, eternally free of suffering or that pain and fear should disappear entirely, are devoutly to be wished, but hardly to be expected. Yet it is to be hoped for nonetheless, with all our hearts.

Today I am planting bulbs for flowers that will appear in the spring.

Today I am beginning to pack for a trip to California to help celebrate Debbi's life and the release of her death.

I remind myself that the cleanliness of a place is not the point of what I am doing. I am working to open my heart and be of service to all beings everywhere. I do my best to refrain from parceling out my assistance based on my perception of merit. The trashy street is just as worthy of my attention as the nearly pristine—and is clearly more in need. Still, there are days, especially dark and gloomy days, when I cannot bring myself to go those neglected routes.

I wish these things with all my heart—well, to the best of my ability, anyway—and equally. My wife is in the list, but so is Osama bin Laden's family. My son is here, but so is Dick Cheney. As far as that goes, "all beings" includes all beings, no matter how loathsome. So mosquitoes are here, and Congress, Barak Obama and George W. Bush, the coworkers who drive me nuts and those I am drawn to. I wish them all the best of everything, always. For reasons I am not sure I understand, I do not include the dead, so there are gaps where people used to be. We arise and pass away, that is the teaching there. My list changes as there are births and marriages and divorces and death.

Sometimes I pick up pieces of trash that were part of something that was at one time, perhaps long ago, lovingly acquired, or I like to think so. The beauty or utility of a thing arises in our minds and we take it into our lives. Then it fades and becomes less useful or attractive until we entirely forget why we desired it in the first place. Then it becomes trash. And sometimes, with the heedlessness of the distracted or the misguided flip of a garbage can, it becomes litter, trash on the ground, my fodder.

Everyone is working toward the end of suffering. Hitler thought he was working toward the end of suffering, Idi Amin thought so, as did Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein. Their means were unskillful in the extreme, but their goal was the same as mine—to end suffering in this life and always, so that we might have true and lasting joy. It is difficult to bring this realization into my heart, the more so with examples that are less remote and affect me more directly: does my boss really have my best interest at heart? Does the government of this country really care about the well-being of the poor? The answer is, it doesn't matter. They all wish, as I do, for the end of suffering, and I wish this for them. I wish them peace and happiness and harmony. Wishing them ill does nothing to punish them and only harms me.

Just as we all seek the end of suffering, so, too, there is nothing created by humans in this world that someone, somewhere didn't think would be useful, if only in a limited way. Junk mail, rotting food, plastic bags, old mops, hard drives, broken lamps, bottle caps, cigarette packs, napkins, drink cups—all had their day in the sun. Sometimes I imagine them with preferences, glad to have been of service and now resigned—proud, even—to be sent back into the stream of reuse and decay. They were purposeful, then discarded, their constituent elements recommitted to usefulness.

Which is not to say that it is right to allow wrong to happen in this world. Those who are so unskillful as to create suffering for others in the process of attempting to find an end to their own must be confronted, and the greater the harm, the more urgent this need. But even this can be done with love in our hearts, not only for those who are victims of harm or threatened with harm, but toward the perpetrator. If we proceed with hate, we will inevitably cause more harm.

And the lesson is contained in this: tomorrow there will be yet more trash. In the worst places, it is never completely clean, for I can only spare a small amount of time to the effort and it seems that few others are making any. This is impermanence (known as anicca in the world of Buddhism), the knowledge that all things arise and pass away. Even trash arises and passes away...and then arises again in a different form. These streets will never be clean, and this is as it should be. My job is to be of service, to do what I can, to stoop and bend and take that one piece of paper to the recycle bin. And then another.

This is the lesson of metta. The practice of asking that good come to all beings is not a process of wishful thinking or a form of magic. These are not incantations that will bring about goodness through some esoteric process. This is an inclining of our hearts toward goodness, toward kindness, generosity and love. Though we may feel as if our contribution to the whole is minuscule, imagine what could come to pass if millions of us, billions, even, were actively hoping for good to come to pass for all beings! War would be impossible, murder would cease, rape would be a thing of the past, cruelty a fever dream. We would not tolerate evil among us and would smother it, not with swords, but with our hearts.