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The boys went back to their other house today. We’ve had an amazing Christmas, sledding, playing games, making Lego and being together as a family. I spent Christmas with my father for the first time in seventeen years, and that was the greatest gift of the season. I love Christmas and this was a really good one. Now, the house quiet and the boys gone for another week, and I’m experiencing the post-Christmas doldrums.

Everything looks the same; the tree is still up and the mantel still decked with ornaments and lights and boughs, but something is missing.

There is a saying in Buddhism: before enlightenment, cut wood, haul water; after enlightenment, cut wood, haul water. Before Christmas, turn on lights and sit before the tree. After Christmas, turn on the lights and sit before the tree.

Of course, celebrating a family Christmas isn’t the same as enlightenment, but there are some similarities. Christmas is one time of the year that many people experience peace, if only for a short while. For me it often comes after all the hullabaloo of the day is over, and I can sit quietly with my family and look at the Christmas tree, and hold them in my arms and feel completely at peace. Others feel it during a once-a-year trip to the Church; others still while offering some generous charitable gift at a homeless shelter or the Salvation Army.

Whatever its cause, this harmony is a glimpse of a possible permanent peace that comes from enlightenment; the enduring end of suffering. In short, that suffering ends through unconditional love.

For a few, including Gautama Buddha, suffering can be conquered through devotion to meditation and a lifetime of practice, study, laughter and good will, the rest of us only catch fleeting glimpses.

And so it is at Christmas. The company comes and goes, the day passes, and soon the New Year is upon us and before we know it, the brief moment of peace is a fading memory.

We turn on the Christmas lights and sit before the tree, but the peace it brought has slipped away.

My favourite book on Buddhism is called After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, by Jack Cornfield. For the longest time I had only read the opening chapter, the title of the work being enough to keep my mind occupied.

Life is punctuated by moments of bliss, pure love, complete peace, clear vision, and total unity, but then they are gone, and we’re left doing the dishes again, trying to hurry the kids off to school and meet some deadline at work. We crave a return to those moments of perfection, and sometimes grow weary or resentful of the day-to-day humdrum that occupies most of our lives. We crave distraction from it; we want to escape.

But as the saying goes, both before and after enlightenment, life is almost entirely made up of routine. It can be either tedious, or blissful; the choice is ours to make. Even for those achieving enlightenment, it is a reality. In fact, for those conquering suffering, facing that choice may be the key to creating a lasting peace.

The boys are gone and the house is quiet. There is no monumental war of Star Wars Lego figures taking place across the living room carpet. Nobody is asking for one more piece of Christmas candy. I’m sitting by the fire, the tree lit beside me; and every single moment I am making the choice to be at peace with myself and my life. It is a gift that transcends the season.

Silas, my six year old, wanted to know what Buddhist’s do to celebrate Christmas. We’ve been talking a lot about spirituality, and its distant cousin religion, lately, and I’ve been telling him and his brother Rio, 9, about the Christmas story. At random times of the day I’ll fire questions at them, pop quiz style, about the birth of Jesus, and offer them a range of ideas to ponder about his life and death. I want them to understand why people started celebrating this season, and how it came to pass that we associate it with the giving and receiving of presents.

I also weave in as many of the other holiday traditions around the approaching darkness, including the Hindu festival of Diwali, known as the festival of lights, and the Jewish Hanukkah when the nine branched Menorah is lit as a meditation on the meaning of the holiday.

Though all of this, the boys know what my beliefs are, but I insist that they should make up their own minds on spirituality. I remind them that belief in the teaching of the Buddha – that there is a path to the end of suffering – is not exclusive, and can be paired with any other set of spiritual beliefs we choose.

But Silas is persistent; he understands that there is something a little different about Dad’s beliefs and administers his own pop quiz as we walk to school one morning.

What can I tell him? I love Christmas, but not because of the birth of the son of God. I believe that Jesus Christ was born, possibly even in Bethlehem, on Christmas over two thousand years ago. But I don’t think he was the son of God in the literal way the bible would have us believe. I think he was a prophet and an Avatar, like the other great spiritual teachers Mohammad and the Buddha.

What I love about Christmas is that it’s a time of peace and good will and love towards one another. It’s possible that peace, good will and love were what was born as the “son” of God on that night so long ago. I have said elsewhere that I think that the bible should have stopped by saying that “God is love” and left well enough alone. I also believe that love is the infinite power of the universe to create life, and that all living things are manifestations of love’s will to exist in the vastness of time and space.

It’s not so much of a stretch, then, to say that Jesus Christ as the “son” of “God” was the emergence of very focused, intense love into the world at a time when humanity was particularly troubled. With true love comes peace, between nations, but also within. Peace was the prophet Jesus Christ’s greatest message; so it was with Lord Buddha: together they taught that peace within one’s soul is needed before we can have peace between nations. And from that comes good will towards one another.

That’s a lot for a six year old to think about, and the conversation diverges to a discussion about which Star Wars Lego set he might find under the tree.

I don’t know what Buddhists do at Christmas to be honest. I’m not part of the club. I know what I’m going to do at Christmas. I’m going to continue to greet every person I meet by silently saying Nameste, which means “the spirit in me greets the spirit in you.” What better way to welcome the spirit of the season into our hearts than through this benediction?

I’m also going to make an extra effort to bring peace, even just for a moment, to those who need it the most: the weary, the downtrodden, those who are suffering for whatever reason, big or small. I’ll do what I can to teach peace and be at peace during this time when we must be the light that shines through the veil of darkness. I’ll do this by telling perfect strangers and my closest friends with a smile, with small talk, and often without words, that they are loved.  I’ll likely slip-up and get frustrated or flustered over the holidays, trying to impose my notion of perfection on an already perfect world. That’s why God, who loves us and wants us to find peace, gave us rum and eggnog at this time of the year. Or maybe that’s the Buddha.

For more seasonal merriment see: Holiday Shopping with the Buddha Claus.

One year ago my family and I moved into our home in Canmore, Alberta. 365 days seem to pass very quickly and now, in many ways the nearly six years I spent on the coast feel dreamlike in their signature.

In a nearly comical way I continue to ruminate on the extraordinary journey. The part of the adventure that still makes me laugh, in a nervous, slightly manic way, was the extraordinary effort to haul all of our stuff across the mountains from Victoria back to Canmore. Fishtailing into on-coming traffic a fully loaded, 35-foot long U-Haul van on black ice on a mountain road has a way of sharpening the mind.

Five years ago I had almost no processions. Everything I owned fit in a friend’s Delica van. When I moved into the big old Victorian house on Chambers Street in Fernwood that I lived in for four years, the place was practically empty. It felt pretty good.

Over the next few years, it filled up. Old third hand furniture was discarded for better second hand stuff. The bed I built for Rio and Silas was replaced by two beds bought at a garage sale. As if by spontaneous cellular division, children’s socks, toys and outdoor gear just materialized. When Jenn and I moved her possessions from Canmore to Victoria for our two years together there, we unloaded a medium sized U-Haul into the house, and it started to feel like a home.

By the time we were ready to move our combined lives back to Canmore together last December, we had to rent the largest U-Haul on the lot and still made dozens of trips to Value Village to unload our unwanted processions.

I get attached to things. They represent comfort, security, and ease. But they also act as talisman for memories. Before I made the move from Victoria back to the mountains I got it in my head that I would expunge some of these mementos from my life. I had this notion of throwing something away every day for 180 days to symbolize turning around 180 degrees.

That’s the way I imaged our move back to the rocks. Turning around completely; leaving old patterns, old habits, old fears, and old attachments behind.

I threw a lot of stuff away.  I wish I had kept a list, but that too would have been just another damn thing to keep track of and I didn’t need that. I think the most significant thing I discarded during that time was a clay statue that had been sculpted and given to me by my first significant girlfriend back when we were in high school. It had broken several times over the last twenty-two or –three years and I’d glued it back together. For me it represented an attachment to my past that I had to discard to fully embrace the present. It left without ceremony.

When it came time to finally load the U-Haul, we were overwhelmed with the amount of stuff we still had. It took two and a half days to load the truck. The first three-quarters were easy. The last quarter took a day and a half. By the end I resorted to rigging a net of yellow rope to hold all the stuff in. And then we loaded our pickup: plants, cleaning supplies, the third coffee maker, and other random things we couldn’t let go of.

Why are we holding onto all this stuff I kept asking myself, and random passersby?

Why indeed? Some of our things provide us with necessary comforts, like the toaster, the first coffee maker, the tea pot and the cork screw. We need some things to live day to day, to earn a living, to enjoy our time with our families and friends. But much of the stuff jammed and jimmied into the back of the U-Haul, like much of what we surround ourselves in modern society, isn’t needed to enjoy our lives; it comes between us and our ability to live fully.

The mass of accumulated possessions in modern life force us into a sort of spiritual indentured servitude and insulate us from the real world. We must work like dogs to afford all the things we think will give us pleasure: TV screens the size of a fridge, cars the size of armoured vehicles, a basement full of toys, gadgets, equipment and memorabilia.

Some of it is useful. Much of it is clutter, under our feet and in our hearts.

It holds us down and ties us to the past and creates barriers to living fully in the present.

Much of this stuff is also wasteful and necessitates gobbling up vast quantities of minerals, petroleum and the remaining ancient forests so we can live in massive homes, drive massive vehicles and watch massive televisions.

Why? Four reasons: First, because we are afraid of being uncomfortable. Second, because we are attached to our past. Third, because we are afraid of confronting our own suffering. Fourth, because we are afraid of our impermanence: we are afraid to die.

Our things give us physical comfort. Some of them make our lives easier. But at what cost? In addition to the slavish labour we must undertake day in and day out to afford the things that supposedly make our lives easier, many of these so-called comforts distract us from the true source of our discomfort, and keep us from confronting our own fears. What are we so afraid of that we must distract ourselves for so much of our lives?

All the stuff in our lives keeps us looking backwards. Reflection on, and celebration of our personal history is wonderful. But there comes a time when we have to let it go. Too often we hold onto things long after they have served their purpose. Too often rather than living in the present we surround ourselves with mementos to a time of our lives that no longer serves us.

Suffering is a fact of life. We all suffer. Conquering suffering is the purpose of Buddhism. Suffering is overcome through the practice of daily meditation, purposeful living, practicing loving-kindness, among other tents of the Eightfold Path. Too often we don’t even realize the depth to which we suffer because we’re distracted. We watch TV, or listen to our iPods or amass untold numbers of gadgets that keep us from sitting quietly and reflecting on the true purpose of our lives: to overcome suffering, and to help others do the same.

And then there is death. We are possibly the only creatures on earth who are aware, from a very early age, that we will die. My own sons and I have talked openly about this since they were four years old. Is it any wonder that we are also the only creatures on earth who amass such extraordinary piles of stuff? Huge homes, massive cars, cottages, boats, collections of books and music and play-things. Do we need these things to survive? Absolutely not. Do they extend our lives? In some cases, by a few years. The stress of struggling and yearning for them more often ends our lives prematurely. Do we need them to be happy? Some bring momentary comfort, even joy. But for the most part, our things serve the purpose of insulating us from the inevitability of impermanence. They distract us from the suffering caused by this knowledge, persuade us that we needn’t face this fear and surmount it, and convince us that maybe we will cheat death if only we can protect ourselves from the world with our processions.

This has been on my mind for the last year. Why all this stuff? Like many others, I’ve had fantasies of throwing it all in the dump (or having a nice big bonfire), strapping my backpack on and disappearing to some remote corner of the world, taking with me just a little bit of the stuff. But that would only be a temporary solution. In a few years, there would be more stuff.

And I like my things. Jenn and I have a small, tasteful home filled with books and keepsakes from our travels and photos that have meaning.

The solution isn’t external. It’s not about the world the surrounds me, cluttered or otherwise. It’s about the world within.

There is a wonderful scene in the Pixar movie Up. In the film a deeply unhappy older gentleman, Carl, and an enthusiastic boy named Russell take a tremendous journey by tying thousands of balloons to Carls’ house and flying, dirigible fashion, to South America. The house is filled with memories of Carl’s deceased wife Ellie. While alive, she and Carl dreamed of adventure and visiting Paradise Falls, but instead lived a quiet, even contented, life. When Ellie died, Carl was wracked with guilt for failing to fulfill his wife’s dream.

Towards the end of the movie, Carl is unable to let go of all the memories entangled in his home in order to help one of the duo’s tag-alongs, a ten foot tall bird named Kevin. Russell is furious and departs to help Kevin on his own, leaving Carl to confront his memories alone. In a moment of clarity, Carl realizes that all of the things that he thought mattered were weighing his house down, so he throws them all out the front door. Last to go are the symbolic chairs that he and his wife sat in throughout their marriage. The house is lighter, the balloons lift it off the ground, and Carl flies to both Kevin and Russell’s rescue.

Carl realizes that his past is weighing him down, and that he has to lighten the load before he can live fully in the present.

Does this mean that I’ll be throwing more of my books, photos, my beloved mountain bike and furniture out the window this weekend? No. But I am aware of how all the things in my life tie me to my past, and distract me from addressing what is truly important. I’ve made a commitment to lighten up, both physically and emotionally so that spiritually I can strive for some manner of freedom from suffering.

In the Zen Buddhism tradition, after one has attained enlightenment, they return to the world with helping hands, easing the suffering of others, and helping them follow the way of the Buddha. This is called Entering the Marketplace, and is the culmination of the Ten Oxherding Pictures, a parable on the path to enlightenment.

Let me be clear about this from the start: I’ve skipped over steps four through nine and rushed headlong and willy-nilly into the Market. There will be more on that later.

My first time in a Costo, to do anything more than gawk in stunned amazement at the brazen consumerism, was on December 23^rd of 2010. It was pretty exciting. Jenn and the boys and I had just moved into our new home in Canmore, Alberta, and had resolved to investigate the option of buying some of our staples in bulk to save money.

During our time together in Victoria, Jenn always threatened to drag me to Costco, just a few kilometers away in Colwood, to stock up on things we used a lot of: flats of juice and cases of Almond Breeze were the examples she suggested. Now, with the nearest Costco a solid hundred kilometers down the road in Calgary, we decide to finally visit one. We did this on the second-to-last day before Christmas.

I think for some this might sound like a recipe for disaster.

It likely would have been five years ago. And it likely would have been had I not been to India in 2008.

But a lot has happened in the last five years; I’ve done a lot of work: the sort of work that allows me to step into a Costco store teaming with crazed consumerism and see it as an opportunity to make people’s lives a little easier. Where else could I find so many opportunities to greet so many other human souls? And get little blocks of cheese on fancy crackers for free as a reward?

A couple of years ago, Jenn and I spent some time in India, where one of our favorite activities was to visit markets. We found an amazing open air produce and fish market in the City of Emakulam, across the bay from the Fort Kochi, which was simply fabulous. And the Thieves and Crawford Markets in Mumbai were extraordinary.

Markets in India aren’t all that different from, say, a modern urban Farmer’s Market, except they are more intense in nearly every way. They are brighter, noisier, darker, more fragrant, and extremely crowded. At one point in the Thieves Market the pedestrian and motorcycle traffic was so congested that we could barely move. I remember an Indian man putting his hand on my shoulder and gently guiding me through the throng. The temperature was in the high thirties that day in Mumbai. We were the only white people in a male dominated, Muslim sector of the city. That takes some getting used to.

Jenn likes to tell stories of our visits to these markets because of how paradoxical they are: two white people, often the only Westerners in sight, weaving their way through these crowded, chaotic locales. I learned that one of the secrets to survival in such quarters was to be effusive with smiles. Smiling is a powerful means of dissolving cultural barriers. So when I would walk into a dimly lit corridor filled with men at work preparing garlands for Shiva ceremonies, I would beam my brightest smile and greet people by saying Namaste: the spirit in me greets the spirit in you. With very few exceptions, this produced warm smiles, handshakes and invitations to photograph the goings on in return. I found myself perched on concrete platforms, talking with men in broken English (their’s was often perfect; mine, not so much) about their work and their lives.

Costco isn’t Kochi, and North-West Calgary isn’t Crawford Market in the world’s third largest city. But something is the same. So when Jenn and I stepped inside my first Costco I made a decision. To use this opportunity to try and relieve people’s suffering.

For most of my life, and for the last five years or so, I’ve been trying steadfastly to find an end to the suffering that characterizes all human endeavors, and certainly has been a dominant force in my own life.

The Buddha taught that, simply put, life entails suffering. Some mistake this to read life is suffering. That’s not what Gautama Buddha taught. What he said was that in life, there is suffering. He also taught that there is a cause to that suffering, and that among the root causes of suffering is attachment, and our failure to see understand the reality of our universe, which is that we are all connected to one another.

The reality is that we’re all part of the same interwoven fabric, and only our dim perception of the world keeps us from seeing that. We see ourselves as isolated sacks of flesh and blood and bones moving about the world, when really the boundaries between ourselves and everything else around us are more like the difference two colours in a sunset. It’s nearly impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Costco is a good place to look if you want to find people who are suffering. Walmart too. We rush through the aisles, scanning the case-lots for something, anything, that will provide us with the illusion of relief from what causes us pain. Inside we feel an ache: loneliness, an isolation, a separation. We mistake these things we are purchasing for our true source of comfort. We believe that if we just had a flat of juice or a case of almond breeze in the cupboard, then we’d be satisfied. But of course we’re not. Because drink the damned things and then we need more.

I wandered around Costco, following my wife up one aisle and down another, loading up the cart with all the things that we regularly buy – from rice to cereal to loaves of bread – and greeting people with the same phrase: “This is my first time in Costco, how about you?”

People would smile and say hi and a few would laugh and we’d strike up a conversation. We’d talk about Christmas plans and the kids and the Calgary winter and then we’d both move on.

“We are all so much together,” said the philosopher and theologian Albert Schweitzer, “but we are dying of loneliness.” I believe I can see this in people’s faces; in the distracted way they move through the world. Telling people that it was my first time in Costco was my way of chipping away at that loneliness, and dissolving the illusion of separation. Suddenly the shell around us cracks, and we become human again: we connect, and for a moment the barriers we erect to protect our fragile souls from the arrows of the world are withdrawn.

When Jenn and I got home from our Costco orgy of consumerism it felt good to fill up the cupboards with the necessities of life. Two cases of Almond Breeze and a double sized box of Cheerios means less trips to the local Safeway, and more money to pay for the other necessities of life. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, so long as we’re being conscious about what we buy. But let’s not mistake that feeling of temporary comfort from the permanent relief from suffering that the Buddha taught was possible.

My next venture into Costco came a month ago, during the kid’s Spring Break. The three of us went into the city to visit the Zoo, and Jenn and I prepared a lengthy shopping list for us, and programmed my phone to dial 911-Shopping Hell if I needed to. But we didn’t.

The three of us went up and down the aisles again, filling our cart, and I did my very best to smile and say hello and chat with people as we went. I couldn’t use my refrain of “first time…” anymore. But I didn’t need to. I simply sought out every opportunity to greet people – fellow travelers – as I encountered them.

I wasn’t always successful: the second person who cut me off to take a parking spot in the massive blacktop lot didn’t win a smile. But that was an exception.

In Zen, the Oxherding Pictures are a parable on enlightenment. There are hundreds of versions of this fable online and in books, and each is illustrated with simple, eloquent line drawings or watercolors. I take my interpretation from Roshi Philip Kapleau’s book The Three Pillars of Zen (Doubleday, 1980).

One: Seeking the Ox. Even though the Ox has never gone astray, we search for it, forgetting the true source of peace. Instead we mistake worldly gain and fear of failure for our true path.

Two: Finding the Tracks. Through the sutras and teachings of the Buddha we come to learn about the Ox. Though still living in the mist of illusion, we know that there is another way.

Three: First Glimpse of the Ox: We realize that everyday distractions are blinding us from seeing the Ox. We catch our first glimpse of him through a brief parting of the mist of illusion.

And for the record, after twenty years of study and five years of challenge and practice, I think I’ve just started to glimpse reality through the mists. The hard, sometimes deeply painful work, of step four yet eludes me.

Four: Catching the Ox (or, as Cat Stevens put it: Catch Bull at Four). After some effort, we are able to rope the Ox, but it is wild, and is attached to its old habits, so struggles. We must use strength and courage to hold onto what we have caught.

Five: Taming the Ox. The struggle with the Ox is won: we have conquered suffering. We no longer struggle with our true nature, but instead accept it, and smile at the paradox of existence. We overcome delusion, accept and triumph over attachment and harbor no illusion of separation.

Six: Riding the Ox Home. Serene, we are no longer in conflict over “gain” and “loss.” Though temptations still ply us, we retain undisturbed.

Seven: Ox Forgotten, Self Alone. In the Dharma – our purpose in the universe – there can be no separation between ourselves and others, ourselves and the world around, and ourselves and enlightenment. This is in part because there never was any separation; it’s only our thinking, and the illusions that this creates, that make us believe we alone.

Eight: All Forgotten. All attachment is vanquished, including attachment to holiness, and to being the Buddha.

Nine: Returning to the Source. We have never been separated from enlightenment. We are already home; we are already a part of the source. We always have been.

Ten: Entering the Marketplace with Helping Hands. Having seen through the illusion and having conquered suffering, our job now is to help others find the tracks of the Ox and embark on their own passage.

But I don’t think we need to wait for steps four through nine to occur in order to cut straight to the desire to enter the marketplace with helping hands.

As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m not always successful. I’m inpatient and hot-headed and have a temper and sometimes I’m not very nice. When I catch myself behaving this way – behaving as if the people I’m curt with aren’t simply an extension of my own fearful, fragile self – I make a point now of apologizing and remembering the greeting of Namaste: two sprits greeting one another; we are the same thing.

Rio and Silas and I proceeded towards the check-out, the long lines stretching back towards the cases of impulse items: chocolate bars and twelve packs of socks. I felt a wave of panic that I’d just loaded hundreds of dollars of food into my shopping cart and that there were people in this world who would never see such a bounty. I looked around me and felt a wave of pity (that most regrettable of emotions)  at all the people there who looked tired and sad and lonesome. And then I looked behind me in the lineup and saw such a face; two faces, a couple who looked worn and weary.

“Hi,” I said, and smiled. “How are you?”

But what I really meant was: You are not alone.

“How was your day today?”

You and I are one.

“I hope that you have a good night. Take care….”

You are loved. I love you. Find peace.