Dog Buddhism
After a frustrating turn with my different technological devices at the Apple store last night I was tired and ready to call it a day. It’s 2011 and we have more devices than we know what to do with. My phone wouldn’t sync to my itunes because my itunes needed to be updated but the hard drive on my macbook needed to be updated in order for itunes to be able to update but my macbook couldn’t be updated without backing up my information on my boyfriend’s external hard drive which we didn’t do before going to the apple store….log in to log out to boot up to upgrade to download to set up to install to finally use the iphone that has been sitting in its box staring at me for the past three days…
but none of this matters. Not a single ounce of it matters.Hindsight is always 20/20. I’m getting better at practicing and seeing this in the moment. But…
Alas, I went home and after eating and doing some odds and ends around the apartment I went to take my 8 month old puppy out to take a wiz one last time before we all went to bed. Usually this process takes a collective 3 minutes. Downstairs, up on a snow pile, lift leg, pee, upstairs, bed. Not last night. Last night he wanted to sniff every single corner and hole and nibblet that he found on the sidewalk. The snow has melted considerably here in NYC and what is left is a dirty wet mess of garbage and probably a spot or 10 where another dog peed 3 months ago before there was any snow on the ground. It’s like a carnival for Watson’s nose. The poor thing didn’t realize how tired the human on the other end of his leash was and how desperately she wanted to crawl into bed. The minutes seemed to drag on forever. 5, 10, 15, 20. Still no wiz. I started to feel it creep up in my stomach, then into my chest, and then it had infiltrated my mind at which point I took it as my reality, this is who I am in this moment. Angry. Victimized. Assaulted by the atrocious notion that my dog would put his nose before my being tired.
Wait…but he’s a dog. He doesn’t have thoughts. He lives in the moment. He also is able to sense emotion better than any human I have ever met. He doesn’t know what it means though, he just knows the person on the other end of the leash is getting anxious, which makes me feel anxious, which makes me want to sniff more, which makes me not know what I did wrong, which makes me not know where to pee or how to pee or IF I SHOULD PEE. sniff sniff tug tug run run.
He never peed. We went upstairs and Ben took him out a few minutes later to try again.
I was left feeling utterly guilty at getting so frustrated with him and raising my voice to an octave I know he doesn’t understand.
We went to bed. I slept restlessly. Oh the guilt. Oh the frustration of it all. At that point it wasn’t based on anything that had actually happened in my day yesterday, it was based on the fact that I had internalized all of those little emotions and I had identified with them. I fell asleep thinking “this is who I am right now”. The truth being it was how I felt , and it had nothing to do with my actual being.
I woke up. Ben was just letting Watson out of his crate. He came over to me as I sluggishly let my legs hang off the side of the bed and wiped the sleep from my eyes. He started licking my toes and nuzzling my legs as if to say “let’s go play, it’s a new day, come on come on!”
He wasn’t mad at me. He didn’t feel any less loved. He didn’t want to give me the silent treatment or judge me based on my behavior the previous night. He wanted to play and love and relish in the delight of a brand spanking new day. There were things to pee on and play with and eat and smell! LET’S GO!
My dog is the most Buddhist being I know. I’m not about to go and start sniffing anyone’s butt to become more like him, but I will try to forgive and love and experience more wholly and gracefully like he does.
I am breathing in, I know I am breathing in…I am breathing out, I know I am breathing out…
