..."It is as if there are two wolves inside me. One is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him, and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way.But the other wolf, ah! He is full of anger. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is helpless anger,for his anger will change nothing.Sometimes, it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit."The boy looked intently into his Grandfather's eyes and asked, "Which one wins, Grandfather?"The Grandfather smiled and quietly said, "The one I feed."
First of all, I'll introduce myself. This is me, this is my first post here. I am a fairly young female, born in the Australian Opal Mining town of Cober Pedy and a practitioner of Ch'an Buddhism living a lifestyle as the style lived by the Shaolin Monks as I can muster.A few details about myself, I am unable to go into the sun. This is not a personal preference, this is a condition. Prolonged sun exposure can result in excessive deep tissue skin damage and ultimately thirty minutes or more could result in my death.. I am therefore predictably nocturnal.. Each and every day I wake, I do an hour of stationary cycling, then I take a shower, the rest of my day proceeds as I take care of house-hold duties and my boyfriends dinner as well as anything else that arises, then come later I do thirty minutes of training typically every two days ( My training is quite intense as I do not take breaks, I go full in and train with many weapons and different styles of Kung Fu throughout the thirty minutes to achieve maximum effect with such a short time frame ) - Typically every other day I do 260 hanging situps ( hanging meaning that my body is not supported by anything other than my legs, the remainder of my body is working of it's own accord to lift itself and achieve the situp. )In the short, I am as devoted to the Shaolin Buddhist lifestyle as I can be. The problem arises in my mentality, my experiences, my thoughts and what I have to deal with regularly. To say I am a pessimist is an understatement, I rarely feel like there's any hope for the world and while I try to follow the Buddhist ideals of compassion and consideration, I find it often difficult to care about others given what I know from experience about the human race. To explain my views and experiences, I will have to go through the process of explaining exactly what my life has been.. I will give the short story..People say 'You have to play the cards you're dealt in life', perhaps this is true.. My cards have always been poor it seems. I was born to two drug addict parents whom conceived me by accident and then abandoned, I was adopted thankfully by my grand parents but in spite of this all my life I have suffered. While my biological mother vanished completely from my life for most of my life, my biological father remained. Throughout my life I received particularly harsh treatment from my peers, I was never one of the 'cool kids' and never had any friends, I say this as a literal statement as opposed to an over reaction, I have literally never had any friends. Even in preschool I was picked on, particularly by one boy whom saw fit to beat me up and scratch my face up for no reason other than cruelty. Throughout Elementary School I was the 'creepy girl', I do not know why. I did not dress the way I do now, look the way I do, or act the way I do; for all intensive purposes I was just a normal little girl.. Yet in particular, I was always singled out. Moreso than any of the other children, I was treated with a particularly unique disdain by my peers. To add onto the torment suffered from the other children I also suffered from my biological father whom through most of my life remained around, he lied to me, hurt me, abused me and exhibited little care for anything other than himself.. In spite of this, being a young girl, I loved him. Throughout middle school nothing changed, if anything things became worse. The boys and girls both became more aggressive towards me and I was ostracized and picked on regularly, some examples of the random cruelty exhibited by my peers would be when I was invited to join the girls basketball team.. Back during these years, I could be out in the sun and I could do anything any other child could do. I was constantly seeking approval and acceptance amongst my peers so given the chance, I jumped.. This invitation proved only to be a way to put me into a vulnerable position, however, the girls who had invited me made it a point to abuse me and embarrass and hurt me physically. I won't go into detail but it ended with me on the ground as drink was poured over me..The worst of my life came in High School, I moved to a new place ( with my biological father ) deciding to give him a chance to be a father rather than claim it and changed schools to a new High School school. It was there that I met another girl whose name I will not disclose and no details I will disclose about her, this is for my own protection as opposed to her. During this time of course, I was dealing with much.. Aside from being an outcast, my biological father now given the chance to raise me was becoming increasingly abusive and physical with me and I sought an outlet to confide to. This girl became that outlet. She was older than I was of course, she seemed kind at first and seemed to mean well.. She has, however.. Become the worst thing to ever happen to me in my entire life by far.. She used me and abused me in ways none has before, she manipulated me and twisted me around her little finger.. She used me to fill a loneliness that she herself felt.. None in the forum will be able to understand exactly what I am speaking of and I'm not going to relay specifics, to put it simply.. She did something to me in an attempt to 'keep me' that changed me forever.. Not just mentally or spiritually but physically and I will never be the same again. After a while, she vanished and left me to figure out things for myself.. She just randomly disappeared on me at a time when although I did not want her around, I needed her around to explain things to me.Shortly after this time in Florida which spanned a little more than a year, I moved back in with my Grand Parents ( My Mom & Dad ) and left my biological father, though as always he continued to linger around.. He did not stop abusing me, in fact he became even worse after we had left. Things in High School became even worse as my condition became increasingly more dangerous to my health and eventually I was unable to go to school normally, I was forced to face being further ostracized because I had to go to school wearing protective clothing that kept my skin and eyes safe from the sun ( this included a special coat and a special pair of sunglasses which were nearly completely black ) this resulted in such treatment from others that I eventually snapped and attacked one of them. The first incident was when I was attacked by several boys whom not only beat me but abused me in different ways, broke a fence outside the school and used the barbed wire and wood from the fence to literally tie me up and pin me to the ground.. They left me outside in the sun and took my coat and glasses.. If you're wondering why I wear my hair over one side of my face? I am blind in that eye. I lost the majority of the skin on my body because it burnt away as well as the majority of my right eye lid, I was able to turn only the left side of my face away from the sun and because of this the sun caused irreparable damage to my right eye causing it to become blind.. I finally snapped one day a year later, on this particular day I was sitting at the computer doing work, the person in question walked behind me, grabbed my shoulders and pushed down on them.. I told them to stop.. They did it again, in frustration I informed them they were on their second strike and they chose this time to grab me, hold me down and close my work on the computer; deleting all my progress. I snapped at this point, slammed them into a window which nearly broke and lifted them by the collar of their shirt.. I informed them flatly "Keep it up. I will tear you apart." and walked away.. Of course they postured and eventually the school officer arrived, I was lead away in handcuffs and banned from the school for being a 'danger to others and unstable' ( This was an over reaction on the schools part and rather ridiculous, mind you. ) From this point on I was home schooled but this didn't stop my problems. My biological father continued to abuse me and became increasingly cruel and aggressive, beating me regularly and telling me how worthless I was.. While he punched me in the back I finally broke and in response, I knocked him through a locked door.. He'd choose this path once more one night when he returned home and demanded the phone from me, at this point my Mother ( Grand Mother ) had told him he was no longer even to address my presence because he'd gone way too far and if he ever attacked me again he'd regret it, well.. I tossed the phone down, choosing not to speak to him and stood from the chair I was sitting in to walk back to my room ( wishing to avoid confrontation ), he took the phone, grabbed me by my hair, threw me up against a table so hard I nearly flipped over it and proceeded to beat me in the back of the head with the phone until it broke. I lost it, absolutely LOST IT. I remember feeling a certain type of anger and hatred bubble up that I'd never felt before, I became so furious that everything became like molasses to me, it felt like everything was moving in slow motion. I remember specifically stepping back, stomping on his toes and when he stumbled back and let loose of me I threw a punch over my shoulder and into his face.. When he was recoiling from the strike I turned, thrust forward, grabbed him by the throat, dug my nails in and literally forced him ( he being much larger than I am ) to his knee's where I held him by the throat and nearly killed him. I do not know what brought me back from that point.. But I managed to resist and I told him in the angriest voice I have ever spoken in "IF YOU EVER F***ING TOUCH ME AGAIN I WILL TEAR YOUR THROAT OUT WILL MY BARE HANDS", spat in his face and pushed him down before walking away. He was bleeding from five points on the neck.This is essentially my story. Some parts have been omitted, others have been edited due to being too graphic to describe or for my own protection..Because of the life I have lived and because of certain circumstances I am unable to devote myself fully to Buddhism.. I desire to but.. There are certain things I do and must do that violate Buddhist beliefs and because of this I often feel like a bad person, a bad Buddhist.My question is this..With so much unbelievably frequent negativity in my life, shown to me by humanity and experienced how am I supposed to find the positive in the world? How when my very nature contradicts the beliefs of the Buddhist system should I think I am a good person or even worthy of being Buddhist? I try... I try so hard to exist in a Buddhist lifestyle, to control my anger and to destroy my hatred but I often feel my hatred and anger is all that keeps me alive.. It is what motivates me to keep going. The disgust with humanity, the disgust with people in general and the desire to simply not be them.. To make myself better, my desire to continue my training in Shaolin Kung Fu in spite of the pain, difficulty and devotion I must place towards it is fueled by the unnatural sickness I feel when I look at the average person in the world today.. Fat, disgusting, complacent, self serving and uncaring.. They exist only to serve themselves.. They sicken me... Yet at the same time I desire to help and see the world heal, become a better place.. But also I feel that this is pointless, it's never going to happen.. The world is as it is and the negativity that exists is so plentiful that I can only hope to stave it off from myself, I feel as if I can't help others.. And I feel as if I'm a monster tearing itself apart, that I can't and shouldn't continue to be..Help me, please. How can I become a better Buddhist?
And I feel as if I'm a monster tearing itself apart, that I can't and shouldn't continue to be..Help me, please. How can I become a better Buddhist?
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Topic: I have difficulties (Read 538 times)
