On My Hands and Knees at the Dog Bowl

Know Yourself: Discovering What We Love

Today I’m adding to my Definitive Guide to Going Gently, on the theme of getting to know ourselves by discovering what we love.

A little squished but I COULD move them…

I found myself on my hands and knees at the dog bowl for the fourth time that night. I was funneling vegan dog biscuits into a spiky hollow pink ball that looks a teensy bit like a strange sex toy. The words came to my mind unbidden: “This is what love looks like.”

We leave a bowl of biscuits out for the dogs but they much prefer to work for their keep. Ralph prefers a frisbee-like plastic container with a curved bottom and holes around the sides, designed so when he pats it with his paws the biscuits trickle out. Aiko likes to chase the pink ball around the room with the occasional prize of a biscuit as they escape. Don’t ask me how many times I’ve filled it up.

I don’t see myself as a particularly generous person. I can make offerings within boundaried spaces without a problem - I almost never resent my psychotherapy clients, or running Buddhist practice here at the temple. When I get a message in the evening asking if I’m free to give someone a lift to the train station, however, I baulk.

As I get older, I am practising coming to terms with the reality of the limits of my generosity. I would like to be a different person - a more flexible person, a kinder person - but I’m not. There are good historical reasons for the limits on my ability to make offerings - I will keep working at healing these. Maybe I’ll continue to soften as time goes on. I might also get more mean!

Either way, I trust that I am accepted by the Buddha just as I am. I also trust that an accurate appraisal of my actual limits will be better not just for me, but for those I choose to offer help to.

We can discover what we love by observing ourselves - our behaviour, our preoccupations, our dreams. I do put myself out in various ways for various living beings, objects and projects. I have put a great deal of energy into our new ministry training programme here at the temple. I have been working hard on my Substack space. For decades I have invested in truth-telling, in connecting to the natural world, in seeking awe.

We all care about something. Often, this ‘something’ is outside of us. Sometimes (or for periods of our lives) we mostly care about our own wounds, carried by young parts of us, as we try to medicate ourselves or distract ourselves or simply run away. I trust that all of this is an attempt at healing, however misguided and counterproductive. I trust that we love what we love, and that if we lean into that, it will help the love to flow.

Rather than grumbling last night, which I often do, it felt like a pleasure to fill up Aiko’s pink ball. Being on my hands and knees was a kind of bowing, in honour of the enormous love I feel.

Go gently,
Satya <3

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Questions to ponder: What kinds of behaviours, thoughts and dreams preoccupy you? What do they tell you about what you love, and what you might be trying to heal? How might you be more honest with yourself and others about the limits of your generosity? How might you lean more into the things you do love?

Look what I found!