Peace Be With You -- and Also With You

There once was a Japanese Zen master whose lifetime of spiritual practice couldn't prevent him from being so very human at the end of it all.

As Buddhist author Lama Surya Das tells it, the dying master turned to his hovering students and declared, "I don't want to die."

The students pressed their master for something a bit pithier. You can imagine the scenario: They're leaning in, grasping their prayer beads and trying really hard not to panic about their career choice as they implore him, "But, master, what more do you want to say?"

The master replied, "I really don't want to die."

And then he did.

There are many lessons in this story, but the one I choose to glean is that even the best among us struggle when things don't turn out the way we'd like.

Take the presidential race, for example. Most of us were attached to a particular outcome, which means a lot of us are mighty disappointed right now.

Let's keep in mind Das' admonishment about attachment:

"If you cling to nothing, you can handle anything. This is wisdom. Try to grasp this, but lightly."

Clever guy, that Lama.

I wrote this column the day before the election, when I didn't know who would be shouting and who would be pouting over the electoral map. Regardless of who won, we all are going to be a bunch of losers if we don't mend the gaping holes in partisan hearts.

Remember what happened after the 2004 race? No, I don't mean all those bumper stickers in New York that said, "Have you hit an Ohioan lately?" I'm talking about all those people who, for months and months after the election, insisted they still hadn't recovered from the outcome.

They shared my politics and my disappointment, but sitting next to them at a dinner party was like breaking bread with Eeyore. I got really tired of nodding sympathetically and saying, "Yes, but you still have your health and all of your teeth."

The election is behind us.

During the past few months, too many people told me they never, as in not ever, would speak to this relative or forgive that friend because of their choices for president. They used phrases such as "dead to me" and "out of the will." Accused them of genes gone bad, too.

Mercy.

Maybe you were one of those people. It felt so right at the time, didn't it, that righteous anger? It was hard discovering that people you love harbored no affection for your judgment. And they weren't always nice about it, either.

Well, you'd show them.

Here we are, though, only hours after the election, and this forever thing already is starting to sound a little silly, don't you think? For one thing, Thanksgiving is only, what, three weeks away?

Maybe you're dug in. All I ask is that you imagine that the person you're so sure you never want to see again just dropped dead. Boom. On the floor and in the ground.

I'm sure I'm not the only one right now thinking of what Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn said:

"You will cry and cry and wish that he could come back to life."

He means this life.

And you know he's right.

So take down the yard sign and pick up the phone. Say "hi" to the neighbor and stop telling your spouse to talk to the hand. And go tell Aunt Ada you can't wait to eat her sweet potato hash at Thanksgiving.

Despite our differences, we all just survived the longest presidential campaign in American history. The nasty ads are gone. So are the robo calls and at least half the pundits.

Take a deep breath, and savor the salve of silence.

To quote that sage philosopher Charlie Brown: "Happiness is finally getting the splinter out."

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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