DEALING WITH RELATIONSHIPS
DEALING WITH RELATIONS WITHOUT YOUR HEAD IN THE SAND
"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
DESPAIR
Where did it all go wrong? Of course the answer is, in the beginning.
Now we have two possibilities:
Do what society and the churches advocates, "try and make it work".
or
Solve the problem by bailing out with the least collateral damage possible.
Those are Blind Dharma answers
What do they mean by "trying to make it work"? It really is like taking apart a watch
that doesn't work to repair it when you have never opened the back
before. The great diffcuty appears at the beginning, for you can't even get
the damned back off the watch. So what do you do? You can't buy another
one because the old one has been with you a long time and there is
sentimental value, so the solution is to go to a watch mender...
Let's call them a Relations Counselor.
Now what the relations counselor really wants is to keep you sufficiently
together so that you wil both keep coming... even if separately.
Would it be fair to ask the counselor how his own relationship is working or
who his or her counselor is? Perhaps not.
But they do have perfect Blind Dharma answers. First you have to understand
one another. How can you do that if you can't even really understand yourself?
Next you have to communicate... but the problem is you have nothing to say
that the other is interested in, so you have to make something up. If you are
caught out then you are shallow and not trying... If you just wait, then that
becomes resistance to togetherness. What you will probably learn after
counseling is that you have a greater problem than you thought.
Are you male or female? That is the first question. Actually it doesn't matter,
for whatever you are, you are doing it all wrong.
Take a glance first then at the following :
The Hebrew Bible tells us that the Lion can lay down with the Lamb, which is
all very well, but the problem arises more when both are on their feet.
When the Identities have taken their stand then there is clearly very little
one can do. The question then becomes how to deal with the situation in
which they must part but share the spoils.
"Me and mine" rears its ugly head and while red meat causes no problem of
sharing for Lion and Lamb, in the case of two human creatures the meat
(wealth and children) are not easily cut in half without dreadful combat
and desire for retribution.
What does true Dharma say about the matter?
Well, it is clear that too often children are cut in half and that certainly is not
nature's way. There are few Solomons around, so you can forget Justice
which is as blind as Blind Dharma anyway.
You could stay together until the child or children are old enough to figure
out how stupid human adults are or try to get something that is "good for
the children".
Who knows what is good for the children?
Shared custody is a terrible legal term, but it clearly echoes the mind of our
civilization.
What is it that is shared? You cannot share a child between two adults
because it is not possessable. You can share its space and time, but
somehow there are always "other factors" that creep in, third parties,
mental contol, sexually bound one up-manship and a thousand and one
subtle things that brand the child with the circle cross brand or the circle
arrow brand.
The Dharma answer is search inside yourself with honesty and clear
introspection, calmness and patience and give all that you can give, asking
nothing in return.
The problem is that if you could do that then you would have the problem
in the first place. The Blind Dharma answer is, let the lawyers and the judge
sort it out and you just try and get as much as you can. Of course that
must be the correct Blind Dharma answer, because, after all the other one was
wrong and what's mine is mine... for the good of the children.