Finding Your Own Fulfillment

Saturday Stories

June 9, 2018

The song "The One I Love" by Mike McClellan is playing as I write this. It's perfect because it says what I want to say.

"I don't care for parties and I like the quiet life, and I've never felt at ease in a crowd..."

I think the most authentic people in the world are those who have embraced who they are, and they stay true to themselves in a world full of plastic.

These thoughts came to me as I re-read Leo Buscaglia's The Way of The Bull, the story of his own spiritual journey. His title was inspired by "10 Bulls," the classic Zen treatise by the Zen Master Kakuan during the twelfth century.

I'm happy to know that I wasn't the only one who had questioned the things we have been conditioned to believe. And I find it very inspiring that someone far wiser than I had also dared to listen to his own heart.

"I began to believe in my own senses, to trust my own mind," says Leo. "It soon became painfully obvious that much of what I had been taught had served as the greatest deterrent to joy and finding myself, and had led me rather into my greatest  fears, disappointments, confusions and pain."

Our society expects us to have a lot of money and material wealth to be considered successful. I think that dreams of a better life are all fine, but if we identify ourselves purely with external things, then there will always be a sense of something missing even if we gain a lot.

"I began to wonder: If man is his 'things,' what happens to him when he loses them or they are taken away from him?"

We have been taught that we are worthy only if we achieve goals. I think this is also fine by itself, but sometimes we become blind to everything else. Sometimes, when we have hit the mark, we realize too late that we have also lost something in our life that we can never replace.

"Time and experience revealed to me that life was a trip, not a goal," says Leo. "I had to question: If life is a continuing trip, does it matter if one ever 'gets' anywhere?"

Buscaglia shares his travels throughout Asia. I love the story of the bells of the Himalayas, but of course my favorite was when he went to Japan and stayed in a Buddhist temple.

"For Zen, nothing is of greater value that the Moment," the abbot tells him. "Life is now. Yesterday is past and gone and therefore unreal, only real in its effects on the moment. The future is not real, and possibly will never be more simply a dream. This leaves simply the Now, the Moment, as reality. Yet so many people live only under the shadow of the successes or mistakes of the past or the possibilities and hopes of the future. They do not seem to realize that when they deal with these worlds of the unreal, they are missing the moments, the accumulation of which makes a life. Life, then, becomes a series of moments, either lived or lost. Since moments pass, as time, there is soon nothing left and life is over, leaving some poor unfortunate souls having never lived at all."

The One I Love 

Mike McClellan

Photo courtesy of Audible.com