What? No pie?

The buddha said that the causes of hatred and conflict were envy and stinginess. Stinginess is not just a financial money grubbing attitude, it also includes spiritual stinginess, the inability to rejoice in other people's good fortune and happiness -- a petty attitude. In my opinion, the danger of conflict appears whenever we play the zero sum game. Whenever we make something limited that needs to be limitless. We all understand financial stinginess arises when we think that we can't have the money we need because someone else has more money than we do. Spiritual stinginess happens when we think that we can't have happiness because someone else is happy. We want something from life, and we mistakenly think that someone else (other than our view of ourselves) is keeping us from having it, doing it, enjoying it because they've got some kind of lock on it. My mother is an artist, and recently she has had a breakthrough because she finally accepted that she is not going to produce artwork that follows arbitrary rules, such as "start with an oval", "have a visual hotspot, like a barn, person or animal", "never use white paint, leave the paper white." These art rules were taught to her by various art schools, books, and such. They are reasonable guidelines, but not the whole story. She has struggled over the years because her art never "fit in" to that mold. The art work that she did to appease the rules was never really as convincing as the work she did that broke the rules. Those rules and attitudes are the lock that kept her art from being as big, bold and free as her spirit would allow. When we develop a spirit of abundance, then there are fewer conflicts. We can even take responsibility for what we need to do without feeling that someone else is preventing us from doing it. If I have more, I can give more because there will always be more to give. If I have less, there is more yet for me to receive without taking it away from you. I don't need to tear down your accomplishments, or belittle anyone else's taste or style. I just need to offer the best of myself to the world. My mom let the idea of "what her Art could be" grow beyond the limitations of what "those other people" might think about her work. She stepped away from spiritual pettiness, retaliation, or even worse -- conformity to a standard that was not her true aesthetic -- and let her artwork exist in a conceptual realm that is bigger, more abundant, and more worthy of her effort. She accepted a realm in which HER art rules can be valid too! By widening her perspective, she removed conflicts not only with other people, artists, and teachers, but also inner conflicts that kept her from doing her best work. She is able to be more spiritually generous with herself. When we consider spiritual stinginess, it isn't that we want our fair share of the pie, or even that we want more of the pie for ourselves. We often need to question the existence of the pie in the first place. Copyright @ 2006 Catherine E. White, all rights reserved.