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Chapter Two

RELATIONSHIPS AS PARTNERSHIPS

And why has modern love developed in such a way as to maximize submission and minimize freedom, with so little argument about it? . . . We are more than happy to police ourselves and those we love and call it living happily ever after. Perhaps a secular society needed another metaphysical entity to subjugate itself to after the death of God and love was available for the job. But isn’t it a little depressing to think we are somehow incapable of inventing forms of emotional life based on anything other than submission?

— LAURA KIPNIS, New York Times Magazine

LAURA KIPNIS IS A PROFESSOR at Northwestern University. She thinks a lot about love. She is very smart and she is very funny and she can wax poetic with the best of them about how screwed up our thinking is when we expect to find lifelong happiness in a relationship with one partner, how deluded we are to continue to believe that we can be sexually attracted to the same person for fifty years. May Buddha bless those few and far between couples capable of doing the psychic and psychological work needed to pull off such a feat. I know I couldn’t do it.

Even ten years is tough for this Dharma puppy. The rules are just too suffocating: “You can’t leave the house without saying where you’re going. You can’t not say what time you’ll return. You can’t go out when the other person feels like staying at home. You can’t be a slob. . . . You can’t gain weight . . . and so on. The specifics don’t matter. What matters is that the operative word is ‘can’t.’ Thus is love obtained.” 1

It need not be so. Real partnerships are possible—relationships where “can” and “how can I help?” are the operative phrases.

LOVING PARTNERSHIPS

Ambapali was blessed with beauty, grace, and charm. Men loved her. They fought over her, vied for her hand, until she was finally appointed the city’s chief courtesan. Only then did she find peace—mostly, anyway. Apparently, Ambapali became a courtesan in the original sense of the word, as a woman offering and accepting culture and pleasure to more than one person.

She was so popular that it is said that the city of Vesali became prosperous solely because of her work and relationships. In turn, Ambapali was generous with her charitable donations, becoming known as the uncrowned queen of the kingdom. She was known for her independence, her sureness about herself, and her view of sexual relationships as partnerships.

One of Ambapali’s most frequent patrons was King Bimbisara of Magadha, one of Buddha’s earliest followers. As the story goes, Buddha and his retinue were resting in a forest southwest of Rajagaha when Bimbisara, then thirty-one years old, appeared, complete with his own retinue of Brahmins, householders, courtiers, orderlies, and guards. 2 Overhearing a teaching about how peace comes from living a life free from the cravings of sensual pleasures, Bimbisara realized that Buddha was no ordinary teacher and invited him and his followers to a meal the next day.

At that meal the king served the monk and his disciples with his own hands—something that was never done. Following the meal he gave Buddha a huge bamboo wood grove near the northern gate of the city of Rajagaha so Buddha and his entourage would always have a quiet refuge to return to in the rainy season.

The king also asked to become Buddha’s disciple. When he was accepted he brought with him followers by the thousands, including Ambapali, who had heard about Buddha from her lover. She was completely struck by the teaching about desire and how grasping and craving for pleasure only leads to trouble. She had seen the consequences of such cravings among the princes who loved her, who were willing to kill each other over her even when she clearly had no interest in a monogamous relationship. Even when she was pregnant with Bimbisara’s son, Ambapali held that her independence was too important to settle down with one partner. No asking for permission, no wrestling over how clean a room needed to be, no staying awake because Bimbisara was snoring and she was obligated to stay in his bed. In this way the courtesan kept her charm and beauty fresh for years.

Ambapali was clearly her own woman. And she was deeply respected for her independence. There is a wonderful story about how the Buddha, many years after they had first met, was traveling through Vesali, where Ambapali lived, and stopped at her mango grove to rest. When she heard that he was there, Ambapali quickly went to visit him, to see if she could offer him and his followers food or if there were any other ways she could help them to be more comfortable. In response, Buddha offered her a one-on-one teaching on the four noble truths and eightfold path. Inspired, Ambapali invited him and all his monks to her living quarters for a feast the next day.

As she was leaving, rushing a little because she had so much work ahead of her, a couple of princes from the area stopped her to ask if she was okay. This wasn’t the calm courtesan they knew. When Ambapali told them about her encounter with Buddha they begged her to let them host him instead.

Nope.

Figuring that if they go to Buddha themselves he would override Ambapali, the princes tracked him down and invited him to a meal the next day—at their palaces. While it was true that Ambapali was an independent woman, she was still just a woman. They were certain Buddha would accept their offer.

Nope.

Buddha had already accepted Ambapali’s invitation. Frustrated, they exclaimed, “We have been defeated by that mango girl! We have been tricked by that mango girl!” 3 Ambapali didn’t budge.

Even in the face of the potential wrath and rejection by several of her lovers, the courtesan hosted a wonderfully successful meal. At the end of it she gave the monks her mango grove so that they would have more choices for refuges during the rainy season.

Ambapali followed Buddha for years. When her son by Bimbisara, Vimala Kondanna, grew up, he also became a monk and achieved enlightenment. One day, hearing a sermon from her son, Ambapali decided it was time to do her spiritual work full-time, quickly falling into her own awakeness.

The courtesan’s verses of enlightenment reflect a deep understanding of how silly it is to depend on fleeting things for happiness, and her take on physical beauty is particularly powerful:

My hair was black, the color of bees,

Each hair ending in a curl.

Now on account of old age

It has become like fibers of hemp:

Not otherwise is the word

Of the Speaker of Truth.

Covered with flowers my head was fragrant

Like a casket of delicate scent. Now on account of old age

It smells like the fur of a dog. Not otherwise is the word

Of the Speaker of Truth . . .

Brilliant and beautiful like jewels,

My eyes were dark blue and long in shape.

Now, hit hard by old age,

Their beauty has utterly vanished.

Not otherwise is the word

Of the Speaker of Truth . . .

Attended by millions of creatures

I went forth in the Conqueror’s Teaching.

I have attained the unshakable state,

I am a true daughter of the Buddha.

I am a master of spiritual powers

And of the purified ear-element.

I am, O great sage, a master of knowledge

Encompassing the minds of others.

I know my previous abodes,

The divine eye is purified,

All my cankers have been destroyed,

Now there is no more re-becoming. 4

It is said that Ambapali was so enlightened that she was able to recollect all of her previous lives, including seeing all the times when she had been a prostitute or a nun. Even in years that were rough, when she had given in to desire and submission, she also saw how she had been capable of tremendous generosity and kindness until, in this lifetime, she had become a true daughter to Buddha’s teachings.

Personal Wholeness

When we accept that we are responsible for our own lives, miracles can happen. One of them is that we start shedding all the “shoulds” and start to see our “suchness,” or who we really are beneath all the masks and roles. We start to feed the suchness, and the more we feed it the 3 happier we become.

Every year I sit down to write a vision of what I expect my life to be in five years—an authentic life without “shoulds,” without masks. On a blank piece of paper I write the following categories down the left side of the page:

 home

 work

 relationships

 art

 spiritual effort

 what else?

Then I give myself ten minutes to write about each topic. For the category “home,” the writing begins with the phrase: “In five years, I’ll live . . .” And then I let her rip. Whatever comes out, comes out. My hand gallops across the page as fast as I can move it. I don’t stop for anybody or anything. This includes grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

When the timer goes off I start the second section: “In five years I’ll be . . .” That section is about livelihood. Where will the money come from to pay the bills? Next section: “In five years the relationships in my life will include . . .” For art, I write about music, drawing, and writing. Then, “In five years, spiritually . . .” Finally, to make sure that nothing has been left out of the vision, I always end with ten minutes for answering the question “Anything else?” Looks like I’ll have a puppy somewhere in the next three years. His name will be Spot.

This is a deeply comforting exercise. It offers an instant taste of wholeness and always stirs up excitement in its doing. Best of all, anytime I need to make a decision related to any of these topics, I can always ask myself which choice will move my life in the direction of the vision. In that way the visions become reality.

There’s more. The exercise itself provides visible proof that not only are we responsible for our own lives, but the very act of taking responsibility opens our hearts so excitement can seep in. This is the same excitement that we feel when our spiritual practice deepens. The two feed each other.

It was Ambapali’s personal wholeness that was so attractive to the princes and to King Bimbisara—her absence of neediness and her ability to leave any relationship that did not respect her independence as a woman. Ambapali lived her relationships as partnerships, not as subjugation. She was independent, clear about what mattered to her, and fearless when it came to disagreeing with her lovers. When she wanted to care for Buddha and his followers, she didn’t ask anyone’s permission. When she decided to follow him herself, again she asked no one’s permission. When she decided to give him a mango grove, it was her own choice. This independence never cost her suitors or patrons. Ironically, it was the combination of her independence, feistiness, and beauty that kept suitors coming to her door until, as an elderly woman, she decided to take a vow of chastity as a nun.

Ambapali realized that she was responsible for her own life. Period. We forget that sometimes. No matter what, in the end, you and I are responsible for ourselves. No one else. Not our husbands, lovers, partners. When we admit to this responsibility and embrace it, all sorts of barriers to spiritual growth and healthy relationships fall away.

Wholeness

Personal wholeness feeds healthy relationships, because it enables us to let go of our craving to have our partners meet so many of our needs. Back when I was way too young to be married, when I was twenty-three (I now happen to believe that the best age for a first marriage is about thirty), I not only married a hunk of a lover but I also immediately (a) got pregnant, and (b) moved two thousand miles away from my family. Within weeks I was depending on my husband for everything. I couldn’t wait for him to get home from school to ask him about his day. And his answer could never just be “good”—I wanted the minutia. How many students had shown up for each class? What did the professor say exactly?

What did he think about what the professor said? Did he have any homework? What was it? Would he like some company while he did it?

To his credit, mostly because his mother apparently raised him to be a martyr, he would answer the questions patiently— every night. Then, after dinner, when all he wanted was some quiet time, I was ready to get out of the house. Could we go to a movie, or for a short hike, or even to the grocery store? Since he was the only person I knew, I fully expected him to go with me, and when he occasionally begged off, I was devastated.

We almost didn’t make it.

After a year I was so miserable and lonely that I went back to school—to graduate school—just to be around other people. Suddenly, a marriage that had deteriorated so badly that my husband had fallen into an affair with a fellow student (the bitch), began to pick up again. The affair ended, I spent most of my free time with friends, and we fell in love at a slightly more mature level. What still fascinates me is that he didn’t end the affair until I was psychologically independent—until I had found my own path and rediscovered a sense of wholeness without his help.

All kinds of partnerships are possible when we are whole. One of the best marriages I have ever known was a husband and wife who literally lived next door to each other. The Portland, Oregon, couple had built two almost identical houses side by side on a lot. They lived independently until one or the other was invited in—for a meal, conversation, a slumber party. She had a job in social work. He was an artist. They had their own friends and a couple of shared ones. Sometimes they took vacations together and sometimes they didn’t. When

I met them I remember being struck by how kind and considerate they were of each other. Nothing was taken for granted.

Psychological independence keeps us interesting. It protects us from potential abuse because, as independent women, staying in a relationship is always a choice. It feeds a confidence that can be sexier than the perfect body.

RELATIONSHIP RULES

Like most of my woman friends, I have spent much of my adult life searching for tools that genuinely help to sustain both love relationships and independence. Tools that promote relationships as partnerships. Over the years, I’ve discovered that, communication skills aside, the best tools are internal to both partners and promote the intention of honoring and protecting the relationship as it grows and evolves. What you and I really need are anchors independent of the relationship. What anchors? Unchanging ones, anchors that are “true” not only in the context of loving another person but that are helpful in the other dimensions of our lives as well. When I started to look for anchors from the larger perspective of feeding all parts of us, choices suddenly narrowed down to a handful or less.

At first I zeroed in on the Golden Rule—treat others as you would like to be treated—for its simplicity. But then I took it out of the running. I don’t know about you, but I don’t always want to be treated the way my partner wants to be treated. Here’s just one example, so trite it could make The Man Show. Someone I’d known intimately for years liked to go to sleep right after sex. Me? I wanted to talk, cuddle, analyze our lives, make future plans. The Golden Rule positioned us for an argument every single time one of us brought it up as a potential relationship ground rule.

I kept looking. Buddhism and the Buddhist precepts, while they go a long way in feeding world peace, did not give me tools for feeding an intimate relationship, although they did provide a broad refuge. Not lying; not taking what isn’t given to us; not engaging in promiscuous sex; not muddying our minds with too much alcohol, drugs, or whatever—all useful. After an embarrassingly long time, given that they are pasted onto the front of my refrigerator, I landed on the six paramitas, or perfections. A core part of Buddha’s teachings, the paramitas are sort of like oil you can throw on a fire to help it to burn brighter. They are typically introduced as behaviors that strengthen spiritual practice. They also happen to be terrific catalysts when it comes to building relationships as partnerships.

May I be generous and helpful. May I be pure and virtuous.

May I be patient. May I be able to bear and forbear the wrongs of others.

May I be strenuous, energetic, and persevering.

May I practice meditation and attain concentration and oneness to serve all beings.

May I gain wisdom and be able to give the benefit of my wisdom to others.

Jackpot.

All the ancients who followed Buddha lived by the paramitas. Starting with Ambapali.

May I Be Generous and Helpful

I’ve always loved weddings. Partly it’s because weddings are so beautiful. Brides always glow. Grooms always weep. Love permeates the air like a drug. Now, one of the perks of being a dharma teacher is that I get to go to between three and six weddings each year—as the minister. It is the single most enjoyable thing I do. The ceremonies are a celebration of life and its possibilities, always filled with excitement and a determination on the part of the couple to make their union one that lasts. Usually the couple asks me for advice—despite my own spotty personal history. My response, and the gift that I give to couples, whatever their spiritual tradition, is a small paperback book by the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh called Touching Peace. While it is not a book focused solely on personal relationships, it has some of the best advice of any I’ve encountered. And all of it has to do with the six paramitas and how we need to see our partner as precious, whatever our circumstances. Here’s a taste:

We can do this. We see that the other person, like us, has both flowers and compost inside, and we accept this. Our practice is to water the flowerness in her, and not bring her more garbage. We avoid blaming and arguing. When we try to grow flowers, if the flowers do not grow well, we do not blame or argue with them. We blame ourselves for not taking care of them well. Our partner is a flower. If we take care of her well, she will grow beautifully. If we take care of her poorly, she will wither. To help a flower grow well, we must understand her nature. How much water does she need? How much sunshine? We look deeply into ourselves to see our true nature, and we look into the other person to see her nature. . . . We can sit down, hold our partner’s hand, look deeply at him, and say, “Darling, do I understand you enough? Do I water your seeds of suffering? Do I water your seeds of joy? Please tell me how I can love you better.” 5

Loving someone better is about mindfulness, about doing the small things that matter, not the big things. Just because. Maybe it’s showing up with her favorite cup of coffee when you spontaneously stop by where she works. Maybe it’s running an errand for him because he doesn’t have time to get to the ATM machine, the accountant’s, and then home at a decent hour for dinner together. Feeding each other’s essence is as much about surprise acts of kindness as it is about abiding to the negotiated parameters of the relationship. It is your turn to make dinner and your partner just happens to show up with a ready-made meal of your favorite foods. It works, right?

The Buddha taught, over and over and over, that generosity is the first door we walk through if we are serious about our spiritual work. Without generosity enlightenment is flat-out impossible. We’re too self-centered. Unless our relationships are bathed in generosity they don’t have a chance. At the other extreme, generosity can buttress a faltering relationship, giving the other paramitas time to work their magic. It fuels the little extras, the surprise moments that keep us fresh and interesting. And it demonstrates our regard for each other, whatever we’re going through together.

When I was working on my doctoral dissertation, one of the tasks I committed to doing was walking door-to-door in an inner-city neighborhood to do random interviews with the families that lived there. It was pretty scary to a twenty-six-year-old. I had spent many of my formative years in Australia, where strangers simply do not knock on your door—ever.

Here I was breaking my own rules of etiquette. Plus, I didn’t have any idea who lived behind the doors. Maybe Jack the Ripper was still alive. Who could say?

On the other hand, it was obvious that doing the interviews would provide the “primary data” (i.e., “from the horse’s mouth” information) I needed to make my point that a particular federal loan program was helping families to remain in a fast-gentrifying neighborhood. One of the most generous things anyone has ever done for me was my husband getting out of bed with me early each morning before I left. He’d give me the pep talk I needed. On some days, without saying anything, he’d get dressed and get in the car and drive me into the neighborhood, waiting outside through each interview even though he had his own full day of work ahead of him. While we never talked about it, his wide-open generosity told me more about how much he loved me than any bouquet of flowers ever did.

He was so generous and helpful, that man. It was magic for our marriage and got us through more relationship samsara than I care to remember.

May I Be Pure and Virtuous

Trust matters. In partnerships between independent people, trust matters because we are each living self-contained lives in the middle of a shared future. If I can’t trust you in an intimate relationship, particularly one that incorporates spirituality into its ether, then the relationship is doomed. Period. And until courtesans come back into vogue, monogamy matters.

I don’t care what anyone else says. In my experience, adultery or any other behavior that betrays the concepts of “pure and virtuous” destroys relationships, even those in which the partners agree that monogamy is unnecessary. Buddha was a broken record on this:

Indulging in transient pleasures

While failing to do the real work of our lives

leads us to envy the ones who have

spent time and energy on their spiritual work . . . 6

There is something about betrayal that destroys a relationship in its heart. I’ve seen, been with, and lived through forgiving people who’ve crossed that boundary. To this day I remain convinced that things are never quite the same afterward, even when the couple agrees to move through a healing process for the sake of the marriage or relationship. If I am in a relationship that is a partnership, my partner and I need to openly, publicly, and loudly commit to virtue and act accordingly. If we can’t, then we have to stop pretending we’re in a committed, intimate relationship, because we aren’t.

Virtue is tough. Loyalty can suck. Attractive people are everywhere. Sex and sensual pleasures are in the air. When we feel ourselves drawn away from our partner it is critical to ask ourselves, just as the ancient women did: What really matters? If we discover we can’t stay steady, then commit to getting out of the partnership or reframing it as friendship. At least stop pretending that we are being “pure and virtuous” when we aren’t. I hate to think of the karmic consequences of that particular dance.

May I Be Patient. May I Bear and Forbear the Wrongs of Others

One of the great surprises of partnerships like Ambapali’s is that we can be more patient with our partners. Back in the days when I only knew complete dependency as a marriage model, every wrong move on the part of my husband made me impatient. He wasn’t perfect. I was concerned. Concern morphed into irritation pretty quickly. On days when all I had to look forward to was watching the four toddlers I baby-sat, even small irritations grew into marriage-threatening themes. That’s what dependency does.

With independence we can shrug off irritations, because they are only one part of this parade we call life. We don’t have hours to dwell on nuances of meaning, because our days are filled with other people, places, and things. I watch my friend Deborah with her partner, Drew. They have been in love for about three years now. Their public displays of affection continue unabated. Deborah is, by nature, not a patient woman. She makes decisions quickly and doesn’t take any flak from the contractors who share her world. She isn’t a woman you would expect to be patient with a partner. And yet she is.

Dinners he’s late for, forgotten phone calls, miscues about rendezvous are shrugged off without much more than a grimace. She has plenty to keep her busy, and every surprise loss in their plans to be together becomes an opportunity for her to fill that time slot with a different activity she enjoys—reading, gardening, cooking.

For their first year together I wondered about her flexibility and willingness to keep pretty much all irritations on an “it’s no big deal” plane. Over time I’ve noticed that her patience and willingness to bear and forbear both of their mistakes has somehow transformed Drew’s behavior. He is late less often and calls when he says he will. Surprise bouquets of flowers and garden tools appear. After three years he remains head over heels in love with this independent woman, cowgirl boots, pickup, and all.

Patience. One of my best friends in the whole world, Alice, has been married to the same man for almost thirty years, I think. She had heard about him before they met—he was the wild man of their overlapping friendship circle. Finally, at a toga party, they were introduced. That he wasn’t wearing anything under the toga was an added bonus, she says. At the time, Alice was a Victorian beauty with porcelain skin, fathomless eyes, and waist-long hair. In the years they have been together they have been through just about everything two people can go through. What has struck me the entire time has been their patience with each other, and with the relationship. Even at her most frustrated, Alice only has kind things to say about her husband. To this day, he would lie down and die for her. I’m sure of it.

When I ask Alice how they’ve made it this far, her answer is always “patience,” even when she doesn’t actually say the word. She talks about waiting out the tough times because, in the end, they are both good people who love each other. Hearing her, I think of all the times I’ve shrugged off relationships because of impatience. Times got a little rough—or worse, boring. (This is all pre-Zen, of course!) Patience would have helped me through my Cinderella reactions to imperfect partners. It would have helped me to stay put long enough to see what someone was really like behind the crisis of the moment.

At the same time, patience protects us when we let go of relationships that just plain don’t work. When my Aussie husband made it clear that he couldn’t live in the United States—for valid reasons—and I had the courage to say I couldn’t immigrate with my then preteen daughter, we both knew our marriage wasn’t going to make it. Because he is patient and because I love him, we were able to unweave the marriage, annul it actually, in a way that protected our friendship. To this day, if I ever make it to Queensland, his is the phone number I’ll call for suggestions for places to stay, eat, and surf.

May I Be Energetic and Persevering

When I was at Deloitte and Touche, an international management consulting and accounting firm, there was a manager, Allison, who always struck me as being a natural-born leader. A young, athletic-bodied woman, she made decisions quickly and easily, didn’t take criticisms personally, and took on the toughest assignments with something that looked suspiciously like eagerness. Much of the time, her assignments kept her away from her husband day and night, for weeks at a time.

One day I asked her how her husband dealt with her absences. I knew the track record for marriages of female management consultants wasn’t good. Earlier that morning I had sat in on a managers’ meeting and noted that, while all the men were married, all the women, except Allison, were single. Most of us had been married but weren’t anymore. One of the younger women—bright and beautiful just so you know—had never been in a long-term relationship. And there was Allison. So I was curious.

She told me her husband was completely supportive of her work. They had a real partnership, she said. When I asked how this was possible, she responded that it had to do with ho they met. Three years earlier, overweight, she had decided to ride a bike across the country, east to west, as her way of slimming down. Along the way she met her husband. Although he didn’t need to lose weight, he was also riding a bike cross-country. For the first few states she didn’t like him at all, but it was safer to be with another person. Plus, her energy and effort were going into the biking.

By the second batch of states they were friends, working hard together, still concentrating on the bikes. By Colorado she was in love. When they hit California he asked her to marry him. What brought them together was their shared energetic effort. It was a surprise aphrodisiac. Physically putting all of themselves into the trip was just plain sexy.

I see it all the time at retreats. People who might never notice one another on the street or in a different environment are working side by side. Maybe it’s scrubbing floors or sanding them. Maybe it’s composting or building stupas together. Whatever the task, the energy put into it has a way of transforming interactions. People fall in love. Allison stayed in love because she continued to put the bike ride energy into her marriage. So when she and her husband were together, they focused on each other and usually did something athletic together, like hike, climb, or ride. And they remembered how much they cared about each other: enough to give each other the space of work independence.

There is something quite wonderful about putting lots of energy into the known aspects of our lives: “I spent the entire work period every day at an exercise session. . . . I did back bends and stretches while changing the linen; I twisted my body rhythmically to sweep floors; I hung sequentially from each vertebra in my back to scour the toilet; I squeezed the Windex bottle with all five fingers, alternating my hands to wash the windows. I breathed fully and deeply to set a rhythm for my body movements. After a few weeks of this activity I was exhilarated and bursting with energy.” 7

Virya, energy, is just plain appealing. In this place a person’s movements are beautiful, like a spontaneous dance. And there is an authenticity, an openness, almost a vulnerability, about these moments that feeds relationships, because one partner isn’t being needy or judging. Instead, she is simply doing what she is doing and no more. But also no less.

Buddha’s women followers gave relationships everything they had. They heard him literally and were clearly good students. Their energy never lessened, not when they were hungry or tired, not when they were thirsty or sick. It didn’t let up when they were crowded together in small huts during the rainy season or when they made protocol mistakes.

This is the energy that feeds relationships. It tells the person we love that he or she matters to us. One of the few pieces of advice I listened to when I was married, and one that served me well, was that I should treat every day like it was the last one we would have together, to pretend that I would never see my husband again. This advice came from one of my dharma brothers, a man who lives in Mexico City, where there is so much person-to-person crime that, too often, couples really don’t see each other again after they kiss good-bye in the morning. It was useful advice. It reminded me to pay attention, told me to take the time to put on clean clothes and wash my hair even when I was only going to see a handful of little kids that day. Virya is the energy that helps us to hear the family stories for the hundredth time with fresh ears and genuine smiles. In my case, virya energy reminded me not to take anything for granted. While other aspects of our marriage eventually deteriorated, energetic effort kept our sexual relationship exciting, spunky, and interesting, without the need for whips and chains.

Virya paramita means slogging through the valleys that happen in any intimate relationship. If you were raised on Cinderella like me, it may not even occur to you that there will be valleys in a relationship. But there always are. Energetic effort provides the booster shot that keeps us going through the reality of love until we can establish higher ground.

May I Practice Meditation and Attain Concentration and Oneness to Serve All Beings

A psychologist once told me that relationships depend far more on who we are than on whom we choose. I’m sure this is true. One of the problems we face in relationships is that we think we know who we are when we don’t. Before I started meditating I thought of myself as calm, kind, patient, and informal. Also humorous. If you had asked me what I brought to my relationship I would have listed those attributes. Then an eye twitch, two actually, drove me to meditation. Sitting in a quiet meditation hall, trying my best to quietly breath in and out, I got the surprise of my life. My thoughts weren’t kind and I wasn’t calm. I fretted, complained, and ranted all the way through my first few years (yup, years) of meditating. To this day I have no idea why I thought I was calm. And intense, thy name is moi.

One of Buddhism’s most famous Zen masters, Dogen, taught that studying Buddhism means studying ourselves first. That’s what Buddha’s women disciples did. And it is what you and I do when we sit quietly, allowing our minds to show us who we really are, what we’re really like. Happily, having a sense of humor was pretty accurate. But I’ve had to learn to stop worrying so much. If he’s late, it doesn’t mean he’s dead or has run into his ex-wife. And I’m calmer, which means that

I actually hear the end of sentences. Patience is slowly showing its face, and kindness . . . okay, kindness has always been there.

The point is that we need to really know what we’re bringing into a relationship or situation and whom we’re bringing into it. As long as I was portraying myself as calm and patient, when I was neither, I was setting up my partner. He expected something that didn’t exist. It must have been like trying to have a relationship with a full-body mask—an impossible undertaking. When I didn’t have a clear picture of myself I shot miscues into the air all day. When I asked a friend, “When will I see you again?” and he answered, “Sometime next week,” he assumed that was a perfectly fine answer, given my calm “Okay.” What he didn’t know was that I had instantly kicked into analysis paralysis trying to figure out all the secret meanings and messages behind his casual response. Happily, meditating caused huge shifts in my behavior—for the better.

If I’m unsure about a response I ask for clarification, for concrete responses. “Oh, by Friday I’ll hear from you? Perfect.” The difference in my interactions with people is enormous.

May I Gain Wisdom and Be Able to Give the Benefit of My Wisdom to Others

Prajna is wisdom, about seeing into the heart of a situation. This is not a wisdom of intelligence but of clarity. When we get rid of some of the murkiness in our brains—the opinions, fears, and melodrama—clarity shows up. And when we bring that clarity or prajna into our relationships, we know intuitively what needs doing. We know what will protect and build a relationship that feeds us and what actions and thinking will create the least harm should we leave a relationship.

Prajna protects compassion. Master Dogen taught that there are really four wisdoms: generosity, or giving without expecting anything in return; loving words; goodwill; and identifying with whatever the other person is going through. When all four are introduced into a relationship, whatever the situation, things get better. This does not necessarily mean that the relationship survives. It may mean going out on our own because we know that we deserve a relationship that offers a partnership of respected equals.

When I was first falling in love with meditation, my boyfriend was very patient with my “stinky Zen.” As far as I was concerned, every moment between us was a Zen moment, reflecting the truths of the patriarchs one way or another. The longer I sat, though, the more obvious it became that he and I weren’t going to make it. Our world views were just too far apart. At the time, I was headed (although I didn’t realize it yet) for a three-year seminary, and he was headed for the Michigan Militia.

He broke up with me.

But he did it with such wisdom that I love him to this day. For the year we were together he was always generous, even to the point of driving me to the temple at four forty-five on some mornings so I could sit with the temple residents. Even as he told me that he knew we weren’t going to work, he said it with such tenderness that it actually took a couple of minutes for his words to sink in. His reasons for the breakup were completely motivated by goodwill. He honestly cared about what was best for both of us. He wasn’t willing to get in my way and, frankly, wasn’t interested in my being worried about his way. He sat with me for what felt like days, waiting for my response, holding me while I cried. The thing is, I knew he was right. Even if it broke my heart.

We still run into each other. Each time it’s like seeing an old friend. To this day I am convinced that we are okay with each other because of the deep, compassion-filled wisdom he demonstrated on my couch that night.

HOLDING ON TO THE FRIENDSHIP

One of the heartbreaks of a broken relationship is that we so often lose a good friend when it is clear that the romantic relationship no longer works. It needn’t be so. When we leave relationships with our hearts clear, friendships can survive. For most of us (hopefully it isn’t just me!) this means giving up anger, greed, and delusion—Buddhism’s three poisons. We have to give up the righteous anger that pretty much always follows having been wronged—even if we were the ones to call it quits. (I’ve never known a woman to be other than righteously angry at the end of a relationship . . . okay, maybe once, but she was a long-term Zen master.) We have to give up wanting something we can no longer have—a sexual relationship, for example. And we have to give up our deluded hope of reconciliation on our own terms. Freed from these three components, we can stay friends.

Beth and Doug Stone have been divorced since 1986. Until his recent death Doug lived in New Hampshire, Beth in greater Los Angeles. “It’s always a shock to people that we’re so close, that Doug and I were still friends and went places together when he was here. He was my ex-husband of sixteen years . . . we talked on the phone once a day at least, if not twice. When I had a problem, I called him. When I had a good thing to tell him, I called him. One night I was playing Trivial Pursuit with a bunch of friends. It must have been three o’clock his time. I didn’t know the answer so I called him. He’d call just to tell me a joke. To chitchat.” 8

Theirs was a partnership—a bond that neither was willing to break—inside or outside of marriage. They visited each other, supported each other, were the best of friends: “There wasn’t any reason to remarry. The fact that I had so much support from Doug, emotionally and financially, helped me become independent vicariously. Going through a divorce and raising a boy on your own you become stronger. You find out how much more you can do on your own. . . . He was my confidant. And vice versa. He always had a level head and was always able to make me think clearer.” 9 The two had managed to create a relationship that both were willing to protect by letting go of the anger, greed, and delusion that corner us if we let them. Unmarried, their partnership was a match even the gods would envy. When Doug died on September 11, a passenger on one of the flights out of Boston that was flown into the World Trade Center, Beth was devastated. What a world it would be if we all felt the same way about our former partners.

There are many benefits related to staying friends with former lovers. First off, even when you think you’re finished with the relationship, you aren’t. There is always unfinished business. Just when you think you have all your own stuff you’ll remember that your favorite pair of shoes is in his closet. It’s easy to ask a friend to drop them off, leave them by the door, or let you run by to get them. And those paychecks you’re waiting for? They don’t get forwarded by someone who wants revenge or is too saddled with guilt to change the address on the envelope. Where children are involved, remaining friends can make the difference between a little therapy and a lifetime of it for them.