And let me share as has become famous or infamous in this group,
The holiday themed Dharma talk.
I think I'll get kicked out of Buddhism for some of these,
But I'm willing to do that if it helps us reinterpret our experience in a way that is helpful.
When you think of stories that stand the test of time,
Maybe the ancient stories or maybe more in our lifetime stories,
Everything from Star Wars to,
I don't know,
Snow White.
Repeating stories,
The Grimm's fairy tales,
Some great works of literature,
These things that become iconic,
That become part of our history and that either you know the story well or you know of the story or you're aware there's a big story that most people know about and you don't.
Why does certain stories stick around?
Why do certain tales strike such a chord in the human psyche in such archetypal stories might be one way to think of them.
And one story that remains popular.
Gosh,
I'm not sure when it was published in the late 1880s.
Does anyone know?
But is Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol?
As Barbara said,
She loves to watch it.
I do too,
Barbara.
There's so many different varieties,
Variations.
I like the 1930s version with Alastair Sim.
It's one of my favorites.
There's a 1950s version with George C.
Scott.
There's all sorts of versions and there was an interesting animated Disney version of A Christmas Carol that was put out about two years ago.
Some of you might find that one quite fantastic.
Oh,
Welcome Nancy,
Just in time for the talk.
You can probably watch the meditation another time.
I'll probably ask Neil to send this one out at some point.
But for now.
Why is Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol Scrooge?
The story of Scrooge and his three,
Four actually visitors on one fateful Christmas Eve night.
Why does it hang around?
It's an old tale.
It's quite dated and a lot of us,
Myself and clearly Barbara included could quote half the story to you,
Whether or not we've ever read the original slim mini novel.
So I'm going to talk on the theme of Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol,
The story of Scrooge,
Bah humbug.
But I want you to listen to the profundity of this gentle,
Funny little story.
Funny as an odd,
Not necessarily as an amusing,
Because what you are going to hear,
And it doesn't take any heavy heavy interpreting to find this is in the language of the original story.
You're going to hear about the three poisons.
You're going to hear about hatred.
You're going to hear about greed and you're going to hear about ignorance.
You're going to hear about karma,
The causes and conditions of our actions playing out for us in terms of our experience now and in the future.
You're going to hear about the power to attack the poisons with the antidotes of loving kindness of generosity and of wisdom and clear seeing.
And you're going to hear a story of a very selfish,
Very bitter,
Very miserly,
Very nasty man who we meet when he's probably in modern day times 80 years old.
And we meet him on Christmas Eve.
And if you don't know the story,
I will give enough of the story that you'll be able to follow along just fine.
The story begins with three words.
I think Marley was dead.
Who's Marley?
What we learn in quick order is that Ebenezer Scrooge and his partner in business,
Jacob Marley,
Became very wealthy as essentially money lenders,
A little bit like a wonderful life there.
And Scrooge is a very bitter,
Very selfish man.
We see him.
He's in his office with Bob Cratchit,
His much beleaguered and very kindhearted clerk,
Essentially assistant,
Executive assistant.
And they're freezing cold.
Bob Cratchit is trying to write with his quill pen in the book and his hands are shaking.
He's blowing on his fingers because Scrooge is too Scrooge-like.
It's become a verb,
Much like Google,
Too Scrooge-like to put an extra lump of coal in the cool brazier and to warm up the room.
And some well-meaning people come in on Christmas Eve,
As is wont to be in this season,
To remind us of those less fortunate than us and to ask,
As they are asking all business people in the vicinity for a generous donation to help maybe persons who are homeless,
In our age,
People who are drug addicted,
People who have lost their jobs due to COVID,
People who are struggling more than us.
And we offer the gift of food or money or something towards warm blankets and Scrooge says,
Are there no workhouses?
Are there no prisons?
I support those institutions.
Let the people go there.
And the horrified people soliciting very generously on behalf of good causes say,
But many of them would rather die than go to places like that.
And Scrooge famously says,
Then let them die and decrease the surplus population.
In Dharma terms,
We can think of Scrooge as the personification of ignorance,
Greed and hatred.
He's a very negative,
Nasty,
Loathsome man.
He's cruel and unkind to everyone.
He goes home and barks at the Christmas carolers and they're all afraid to sing when he's around and he snarks at the people in the street and he's nasty to the woman that does his housekeeping and so on and so on.
Lots of hatred,
Lots of aversion,
Lots of greed.
He's too bloody cheap even though he's a very wealthy man to even heat his own home to a comfortable level.
So when are we Scrooge-like?
I want you to apply each of these lessons tonight to your own life.
I can be Scrooge-like.
What is it for each of us?
I want you to think of this.
What is one or two of the things that sort of bank the flames of your own selfishness?
Where do you become small in your heart?
Like the Grinch in the beginning of the story to refer to my other favourite,
As you know.
What is it for each of us?
What are the sorts of things that make us feel small or selfish?
Put our self first.
Forget to think of others.
Often it's fear.
We may be less generous in the giving of monetary objects because we're afraid we won't have enough.
It might be fear of time.
I'd like to help but I'm too busy.
What stimulates us to have a selfish heart?
What feeds our inner Scrooge?
This is a beautiful lesson,
Especially if you do it with self-analysis but without condemnation.
So when do I become Scrooge-like?
When do I become selfish?
When do I pinch my pennies and not even spend them on myself,
Much less anyone else?
What is the motivation behind that?
When I am caught in the delusionary poison and Dharma sense,
In life sense,
Of being selfish,
Of taking care of number one and forgetting that we are all interconnected,
Forgetting the Bodhi Satva vow to work on behalf of all beings' happiness,
All beings' freedom,
All beings' well-being,
Not just me,
Me,
Me,
Me,
Me.
As the story goes on,
Bob Cratchit has asked Scrooge in a rather trembling manner,
Reminded him that the next day is Christmas Day and he won't be in,
And Scrooge says it's a poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every December 25th,
Meaning he's got to pay his assistant for the statutory holiday,
Whatever they called it back then.
And Bob goes gaily skipping home to the warm bosom of his family,
As we will see a little later on this tale.
Scrooge goes to his own fairly nice home that's freezing cold because,
As Apoorvendjian,
He's cheap.
He heats up his yucky meal of gurul.
Why doesn't he have a chef?
Why doesn't he eat a beautiful meal?
He's rich,
Rich,
Rich,
Rich,
Rich,
But he's selfish even to himself.
This is a key point.
He's not just selfish to everybody else.
He's selfish to himself.
He doesn't even feed his own well-being.
And as he's eating his yucky-looking gurul,
There comes a great hullabaloo in his chimney flue,
Crashing and rattling of change,
And he's absolutely terrified.
And I want you to imagine in a literal sense,
How would each of us feel if we were alone in our cavernous cold house,
Eating our spiteful meal,
And we literally heard crashing and banging of change and realized that there was a being coming out of our fireplace,
A ghost,
A horrifying,
Terrifying,
Rotting corpse of a ghost wrapped in chains and dragging change.
Metaphorically,
It's a beautiful metaphor.
What is it in terms of literally imagining?
What happens when your ghosts emerge from your chimney places?
What happens when your own hungry ghosts in the Dharma realm,
Your own needs,
Your own fear,
Your own nightmares?
I was working with a patient recently who has a repeating nightmare that her spouse is cheating on her and will leave her,
Which saddens and horrifies him because he's deeply in love with her and has zero intentions of harming her in any way.
Our repeated nightmares when they come out of our own chimneys and they haunt us.
So Scrooge is there and this awful,
Horrifying apparition arrives and he realizes,
He says,
Who are you,
Spirit?
What are you,
Spirit?
He's absolutely petrified.
And the spirit says,
In life,
Ask me who I was in life.
And he says,
Who were you in life then?
And he says,
I was your partner,
Jacob Marley.
We discovered through the plot that Jacob Marley,
His business partner,
Died seven years before.
And he says,
Why are you wearing all these chains?
And Jacob Marley goes on to give an incredible teaching on cause and effect and karma,
Where she says,
Each link of these chains I forged at my own hand while I lived.
These are the burdens of his selfishness,
His burdens of his ignoring the bodhisattva vow,
Of ignoring the needs of the interconnectedness of beings,
Of ignoring the needs of others,
Being selfish,
Being angry and thinking only of himself.
And in death,
He's cursed to haunt the world,
Dragging these painful chains in perpetuity.
And he's there,
Which is maybe one of his first bodhisattva acts,
To warn his former friend that maybe they had some affection for each other in their miserly,
Nasty little hearts.
And to say,
Your chains were as long as I when I departed seven years ago this night.
Just imagine how long yours are.
And Scrooge is both baffled and disbelieving and terrified and sickened.
And Marley says,
But there is a chance,
There's a chance to turn it around.
You'll be visited this evening by three spirits.
One of them will come when the bell strikes one and one when the bell strikes two and one when the bell strikes three.
Listen well,
Learn well.
And then he disappears.
And Scrooge is like,
Holy smokes,
That was a terrible nightmare.
I think I'm going to go back to sleep.
Think about this.
And I really want you to think about this.
I invite you to journal about it after this class.
I invite you to think about it for the next few days.
I want you to literally imagine that over the course of a night,
You are visited by the ghost of your past,
The ghost showing you what's happening in your present and the ghost showing you the possibilities,
What may happen in your future if you continue on the course you are currently on.
Imagine that.
Sometimes we do a little bit of that in psychotherapy.
Sometimes we do a little bit about that as we write.
Sometimes we do a little bit about that when we set our goals and think of the year gone by,
Where we went wrong and where we went right and what we'd like to manifest to do more of in the year to come.
But imagine if you had the blessing like Ebenezer Scrooge to be visited and given a deep look into your past,
The links and causes and conditions of your karmic patterning that have led to what you are currently doing today.
If you were given a broad look at the present and what your actions were affecting other people,
In what ways were your actions affecting other people and an incredible look into a possible future based on the ways we were certainly behaving.
Would we tremble in fear?
I think in some ways I would.
And what I may be course correct,
What I'm doing right now,
I might adjust some things and what I maybe want to manifest a slightly better future.
I might.
So the story continues.
Scrooge goes to sleep and he is awakened by a loud,
Human cry,
Let us say.
And we won't get into all the details.
It depends on the interpretation.
But he's visited by the ghost of Christmas Past,
Who takes him into his past.
And here we start to learn some of the reasons which are not excuses.
Some of the reasons why Scrooge is behaving the way he behaves in present day,
No matter what unskillful things we are doing,
No matter how we're playing at our greed,
Hatred and delusion,
Our love,
Our kindness and our wisdom.
There are causes and conditions in psychotherapy.
We'd call these childhood experiences,
Traumas,
Patterns,
Habit patterns,
Ways of thinking,
Things that were reinforced.
There are reasons for everything we do.
I say reasons,
Not excuses is a teaching I give a lot,
Which is if you were beaten severely through your childhood by an aggressive and suffering parent,
And then you learn that,
You know,
Attention means pain and love means beating,
You may beat your own spouse or your own child.
There are reasons,
Causes and conditions and patternings that have led to that behaviour.
But they're not excuses.
I don't allow people to say,
Well,
I learned,
You know,
I learned to hit because my dad hit me.
So,
Yeah,
That's the reason why you have a patterning and a tendency to showing your anger that way.
But it's not an excuse for the behaviour.
This is where we as wise people,
As Dharma practitioners,
As people studying the path or our own,
Our own behaviour,
Striving to improve.
We can learn.
There's a reason why I am so resentful towards my spouse because of this thing,
These things that transpired between us in the past,
But that's not an excuse to dismiss them as a bad person.
That's not an excuse to throw away the good.
It's not an excuse for the way I am potentially acting if I'm acting unskillful.
So he goes back to his past and here's a fast forward a little because it's actually fairly complex in the longer version.
But we see a number of things.
We see Scrooge is a boy at school,
Boarding school,
And we see that all the other boys go home at Christmas time and his own selfish and distant father leaves him at school.
And he's the only child left behind.
He's the only child at this school,
Friendless and unpopular and weird and sticking out and not misunderstood.
And it becomes bitter about Christmas.
He becomes bitter about family.
He becomes distrusting that those that are supposed to love us will love us.
We also see glimpses of the one family member that melts his fearsome heart.
And that one family member is his little sister,
A Nan,
I believe her name is.
And he's very fond of her and loves her dearly.
We see these glimpses and then we fast forward to he's an apprentice.
He's left school and he's an apprentice to,
I think,
A merchant,
Mr.
Fezziwag.
And we see some beautiful scenes where Scrooge is quite a lovely young man.
He's very fond of his boss,
Mr.
Fezziwag.
Mr.
Fezziwag is a wonderful,
Benevolent,
Kind,
Wonderful boss,
Which we see as a massive contrast to the way Scrooge has just been teaching Bob Cratchit.
And we see Ebenezer dancing at the Christmas party filled with love,
Being part of a family that has adopted him metaphorically into their circle.
And we see him understanding that love and goodness do exist in the world.
And we see him meet a beautiful young woman.
We see him romance the beautiful young woman and he becomes engaged to the beautiful young woman.
And then we see fast forwarding.
Scrooge has grown up in poverty,
Both financial poverty and emotional poverty.
He's been unloved.
He's been frightened.
He's been alone.
Fezziwag's warm heart takes him in.
He finds a beautiful woman.
He falls in love with her.
They're pledged to be married.
And then Scrooge,
Through a variety of psychological reasons,
Ends up working profoundly hard and becomes more and more and more financially successful,
More and more and more selfish,
More and more motivated by the almighty dollar,
Less and less available to anyone he cares about.
Mr.
Fezziwag dies.
I think Scrooge takes over the business and all he does is work and make tons of money.
And we see a scene where he's with his at the time betrothed,
His at the time fiance,
And she's saying,
Ebeneezer,
I release you from your contract.
We met when we were both poor.
We met when we both only wanted to be happy and we didn't need anything.
You've changed so much.
You're so far from the man I met.
If you met me today,
Poor,
Caring just about love and family,
Would you want to marry me?
And he says,
Well,
I know I wanted to marry you and don't be like that.
And she says,
I release you from your contract.
And she leaves and his heart closes even more and he goes on.
So we see some of these causes and conditions.
We see some of these things that led to this man that we're all judging as a real jackass.
And we see that he was once a frightened and unloved little boy.
He was once found his heart,
Found his hope.
But he got twisted and confused by the belief,
The deluded belief that riches would make him happy,
That money is what it's all about,
And that success is defined by the bottom line,
Not by the broadness of your heart.
So those are the key points that the Ghost of Christmas Past shows him.
He shows him a joyful Christmas.
And he also shows him the sadness and the grief when his beloved younger sister dies giving birth to her first child,
A nephew,
I believe,
Called Fred.
And in the beginning of the movie,
Right before the charity drive,
People come to Scrooge's office,
His nephew drops in and says,
Uncle,
Uncle,
Please join us for Christmas dinner.
And Scrooge tells him,
Christmas is a humbug.
That's where it comes from.
Bah humbug,
Christmas is a humbug.
I want nothing to do with it.
Get out.
You don't matter to me.
You're a fool.
You live on almost no money.
You've married someone that you can't afford.
What are you doing?
Like love and family and tidings of,
Glad tidings of good joy mean nothing.
Scrooge gets taken back to his bed.
He's in a big kerfuffle,
As any of us would be.
And here's what I want you to take a few minutes now and later to really seriously think.
Imagine tonight we go to sleep and some spirit,
Some Dharma,
Dharma Paula comes and takes us on a journey to our past and shows us some of the formative positive and negative events,
Some of the formative experiences and humans and choices we've made that led to who and what we are currently.
What would that be like?
What would you regret?
We see Scrooge start to regret not marrying that beautiful,
Heart-based,
Glorious,
Loving,
Kind woman.
We see him start to regret not having been the kind of boss,
Maybe,
That his dear,
Joyful,
Kind,
Generous boss was.
What would you regret?
Where have we each,
Myself included,
Allowed greed,
Allowed hatred,
Allowed delusion to confuse us into acting in ways that were not only unwholesome but destructive to self or others?
Another way to put it is what are some of the biggest regrets we have,
Some of the biggest mistakes we've made,
Some of the biggest karmic choices we've made that led to things that were really difficult?
The beauty is we can all,
In the present moment,
We can all,
In our choices,
We can all,
Moving towards our future,
Redo,
Remake,
Regret,
Forgive and begin again the choices we've made in the past,
Which is what this iconic story that absolutely refuses to go away is all about.
It's all about the fact that we get a chance,
If we're incredibly lucky,
We get a wake-up call,
If we're incredibly lucky,
Maybe we get dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens,
And with those,
We make choices,
Hopefully,
To begin again.
Scrooge is back in his bed.
He thinks,
Have I lost my mind?
Am I mentally ill?
What's happening?
Was that just a dream?
I must be imagining all this.
What did I eat?
Do I have indigestion?
What's the matter?
And he falls asleep,
And he's woken with a great ruckus by the second ghost,
The ghost of Christmas present,
And this ghost takes him and shows him some things that are happening present day,
And it takes him,
First of all,
To the home of his nephew,
Fred.
Now remember,
This is the child of Scrooge's beloved young sister who died giving birth to Fred,
So he has mixed feelings about Fred.
And Fred is hosting some sort of pre-Christmas dinner party.
He's got friends there.
They're laughing.
They're boisterous.
They've got a lovely meal.
They're in a warm,
Well-decorated,
Welcoming and inviting living room together,
And they're playing a sort of game,
A sort of charades game,
And Fred is saying,
I'm an animal,
And I'm grumpy and fearsome,
And I bite people,
And the punchline is,
You're Ebenezer Scrooge.
You're your Uncle Scrooge,
And everybody roars with laughter,
And Fred's wife says,
You know,
I pity that man.
He's so bitter.
He's so mean.
He's so nasty.
I don't wish him well,
And Fred says,
I wish him well.
I wish he was here.
He's the only one that's hurting.
He's the one that's not here joining us at our Christmas table,
Joining us for friendship and love and sangha,
And so I do very much wish him well,
And I very much do send him the blessings and goodness of the season.
And we see there,
As I would put it forward,
As I think each of you might interpret it,
As that is what we all do when we are generous.
When we don't judge the person who's behaving so unskillfully,
In this case Scrooge,
We don't say,
Yeah,
He's a real selfish jerk.
I can't stand that guy.
We say,
I wish him well.
This is a being that's suffering.
How sad that he's not choosing to partake of what's available to him.
He's not choosing to partake of the goodness,
The kindness,
And the beautiful meal,
And the glass of wine,
And the friendship,
And the laughter that's available to him.
How many of us can apply that to our own life from either side of the coin?
Times where we've been the one judging someone harshly,
Instead of putting ourselves in their shoes and thinking,
What are the causes and conditions?
What are the steps that lead Ebenezer to be so spiteful and mean and so terrified to be vulnerable,
So terrified to be kind,
So terrified to connect with other people?
Who are we to judge until we've walked many,
Many,
Many miles in your shoes?
And when have we rejected offers of kindness?
When have we,
Through shyness,
Through discomfort,
Through story making that they don't really like,
They just feel sorry for us?
Well,
They're not really my kind of people.
Where have we missed out on or not realized or not manifested offers of connection,
Offers of kindness in the world?
So the Ghost of Christmas Present also then takes Ebenezer,
He swoops him across London to a rather dodgy part of town where people who don't have a lot of money live.
And he says,
Who lives here?
Who on earth are we visiting that I could possibly know that lives in the skids?
And the Ghost of Christmas Present says,
This is your clerk and his family,
Bob Cratchit,
Your assistant,
Your secretary,
Your much-beliegered and poorly treated employee.
And this is the only place he can afford to house his family based on the meagre 15 shillings a week you cheap old man,
Pay him.
And so we now get a window into Bob Cratchit and his family.
And we see a gathering,
I think Bob and his wife,
I can't remember his wife's name off the top of my head right now.
They have,
I think,
Six children.
They've got their daughter,
Their elder daughter who's working out of the house.
They've got their elder son,
Peter,
Who's just been given a position as a clerk,
Like his father.
And there's two or three young ones.
And then there is,
Of course,
The famous infamous Tiny Tim,
A young,
Very frail looking boy,
Presumably twisted by polio,
Who's got a crutch and is a very loving,
Very bright manifestation of loving kindness.
And Bob Cratchit is besottedly in love with this beautiful little boy as the whole family because he's just so easy to love.
He's so kind,
He's so forgiving,
He's so positive.
He's just a shining light of kindness.
And we get a glimpse into their Christmas Eve,
We'll get a glimpse of them gathering.
They've got a goose being cooked down the road because they didn't have their own oven,
They didn't have their own places back then.
And so you take it down to the bakery and they've got some shared communal stoves in the back,
Presumably you pay for and you get to cook your goose.
They can't afford a turkey.
And the pudding is singing in the copper.
What does that mean?
Well,
Any plum pudding,
Christmas pudding fans in the joint,
I'm one of them.
My grandmother was born in Yorkshire,
England and made exquisite plum pudding or Christmas pudding,
Which she would cook and bake months before.
Soak it in brandy,
Wrap it up and put it in the pantry for months,
Just the way your proper British or Scottish or Irish grannies did.
And their pudding is singing in the kettle or singing in the copper because the way to traditionally make English plum pudding is you steam it,
You re-steam it and bring it out.
So that's what that means for those of you who don't know weird English cooking,
It's very delicious though.
An acquired taste for a lot of us.
I love it.
And Scrooge is watching this poor family,
But they're wealthy beyond imagination.
They're wealthy beyond imagination in love,
In affection,
In kindredness,
In their support for each other and united in their love for the Bodhisattva of Tiny Tim.
And we also see the flicker,
The shadows,
The doubt and the pain across the adults,
The mum and dad,
Bob and his wife,
When they look at their little boy,
They're well aware that he's tremendously frail.
They're well aware that they don't have the money to get him the best medical care.
And they're well aware that there's a chance that their beautiful little boy won't live.
And they say things like,
You know,
Tim's hale and hearty today.
He really did well.
Martha,
That's the name of his,
No,
That's the daughter,
Can't remember the wife's name.
And Scrooge is watching and you can see a bit like the Grinch's heart growing three sizes.
You can see a little bit of a thawing,
A little bit of puzzlement,
A little bit of like a melting of the ice in Scrooge's heart when he thinks of someone other than himself for maybe the first time in 30 years,
In 40 years,
When he sees this family and instead of mocking them and poo-pooing them,
He sees just the simplicity of connection.
The simplicity of loving kindness,
The simplicity of generosity,
Because again,
Bob Cratchit says,
A toast to the founder of our feast.
And his wife says,
I'll not toast that nasty old man who doesn't pay you and treats you like dirt.
And his,
Her husband,
Scrooge's employee,
Bob Cratchit says,
Oh,
Please,
For me,
For the season,
I would like to toast Ebenezer Scrooge,
The founder of the feast,
My employer,
And I wish him well and may God bless him.
And so they do toast,
She says,
I'll do it for you,
Bob,
And I'll do it for the season,
But I won't do it for that nasty old man,
But I'll do it for you.
To his health,
Mr.
Scrooge.
And God bless us.
And of course,
Tim famously says,
God bless us,
Everyone.
Now,
Scrooge is in consternation.
To be sincerely wished well by the nephew he treats with,
So he despises him in cruelty and rejection,
To the employee that he knows bloody well,
He treats horribly.
And to see that the basic generosity and well-wishing still coming his way,
This is very,
Very confusing.
It's setting his worldview upside down,
As our worldview would be set upside down if this season we could be taken like a fly on the wall into the home of friends,
Into the home of family,
Into the friends of your clients,
Your patients,
Your coworkers,
Your bosses,
And see the truth of the reality of people's lives.
Someone you find maybe standoffish and unpleasant in your workplace,
And you go into their home and you see the daily ups and downs,
The daily losses and sorrows,
The daily joys and hopes that they have,
Your heart would melt.
You would feel understanding instead of judgment.
What would we see if we went right now tonight into the houses of our children,
Our parents,
Our friends,
Our estranged friends,
Our ex-partners?
What would we see if the ghost,
The spirit of Christmas present,
Took us around and gave us a very clear look,
Wise look,
Wise looking at the truth of reality?
What would we see?
How might it soften our heart?
How might it challenge some of our assumptions?
And how might it help our small hearts begin to thaw,
The bits that are frozen?
Because each of us have some bits that are frozen.
And something very interesting happens at the end of his tour with the ghost of Christmas present.
And I don't see this shown in a lot of the depictions,
The movies of Christmas Carol.
It is in the animated one.
At the very end of the ghost of Christmas present,
Who's depicted in the book as sort of like the horn of plenty,
You know,
The cornucopia.
So he's often sitting on top of a vast pile of gifts of nuts,
Of oranges,
Of food,
Of bounty.
The ghost of Christmas present is bountiful.
He's got a horn of plenty and he's got all this incredible booty around him.
And toward the end of their time together,
This,
You know,
Abundant,
Radiant,
Shabby,
Ho ho ho,
Beautiful man,
He's got all these gifts.
He starts to age and get skinny and you start to realize it's a metaphor for a year gone by.
We come in filled with bounty and at the end of the year,
You become old and shrivel and die.
And toward the end of this part of the scene,
Talk about a Dharma teaching.
This god or ghost of Christmas present who started off saying,
I'm abundant,
There's nothing but food and gifts,
Everything you could possibly need is here.
And he's got this long robe,
Sort of like a Santa's robe.
And he opens the robe and down under his robe,
Clinging to his leg on each side are two starving,
Feral children.
And these two starving,
Feral children sort of hiss and spit and lash out towards Ebenezer Scrooge and they're disgusting and Ebenezer is terrified.
And the ghost of Christmas present says,
Because Scrooge says,
Who are those?
What are those?
Get them away from me.
And he says,
These are the children of mankind.
They are want and ignorance.
That's the correct quote from Dickens.
They are want,
Greed,
Wanting,
Clinging and ignorance.
So we've got the two poisons wrapped around the legs of the present if you're not careful.
And who's the third poison?
Ebenezer Scrooge.
He's aversion,
Hatred,
Rejection.
The three poisonous mind states,
The three,
Thank you,
Her name's apparently Emily.
That must be Bob Cratchit's wife's name.
At least someone's helping me out.
Think about it.
Charles Dickens writes that the forgotten children,
The neglected children of mankind are ignorance and greed.
And Scrooge is aversion or hatred.
This is why these tales linger,
Because they speak to our psyches,
Whether we're Christian,
Buddhist,
Muslim,
Agnostic,
Atheist,
It doesn't matter.
Compassion is compassion.
Wisdom is wisdom.
Growing is growing.
Being kind to our fellow women and men and children and animals is universal in all good philosophies and all good religions and all good teachings.
And universally,
The ugliness of the human mind and psyche is greed and ignorance and aversion.
So mind-blowing Dharma teachings from the ghost of Christmas present.
Think for yourself.
What would you see if you could fly around to your neighbor's house?
Your neighbor,
You might not know their name.
What would you see?
What's going on in their hearts?
When you hear of someone who's suicided,
Especially at this time of year,
Especially this particular year,
At this time of year,
What was going on?
What would we have seen if we'd been a fly on the wall?
How could that have moved our hearts?
How could we have reached out?
How could we have been more the true meaning of Christmas,
The true meaning of Dharma,
The true meaning of being a good human?
And I was doing what one of my supervisors in psychology used to be,
The human act.
She said,
You know,
Cheryl,
All that you can ever do is the human act.
And I asked her what I could possibly do,
Because this was in 1993.
I was in my graduate program,
And it's when the AIDS and HIV pandemic was at its peak.
And I was absolutely death sentence.
And I was working volunteering in the downtown east side of Vancouver with street involved people.
And I was counseling a woman my age whose first name happened to be Cheryl,
Who was a street involved sex trade worker and addicted intravenous drug user,
And trying to get herself off the streets.
And I felt so out of my league.
How could I as a privileged middle class Canadian who had very little strife,
Very little trauma in my life,
I said to my supervisor,
Whose name was Pat,
I said to her,
How could I possibly help this person?
And I feel ashamed to even begin to imagine I could even begin to touch the beginnings of an imagining of what her felt experience must be like.
And Pat looked at me with such wisdom and such sweetness.
And she said,
You know,
Cheryl,
Just do the human act.
Just show up in love.
And I sometimes tell myself that when I'm sitting with a patient or online with a couple or speaking to any of you beautiful beings now and then I think,
Just show up in love.
There's a mantra for all of us for 2021 just show up and love.
So in the ghost of Christmas present,
What would we see?
What would we judge?
Where does our own need or want or greed,
Our own ignorance of the truth of reality and our own aversion and hatred or scrooginess get in the way?
Scrooge,
Poor fellow,
He's having quite a night.
He goes back to sleep.
He's woken up by the third and final ghost.
But at this point,
He's believing the scoop.
This isn't just a badly digested bit of beef,
Which is one of the things he said.
That's all you are.
You're an apparition.
You're a nightmare made by a badly digested bit of beef.
He knows that this is the ghost of Christmas future.
And he says,
And he's terrified,
He's terrified to see what the future might look like.
And he says,
Please tell me spirit.
Are these the echoes of things that will be?
Or are they the echoes of things that simply might be?
I want you to tattoo that on your arm and ballpoint anyway.
Are these the shadows of things that will be in the future?
Or are they the shadows of things that simply might be?
Why is that so critical?
You know why?
Because we can always change our destiny.
We can always change the outcome.
We can affect our future karma by our choices in the present.
You can be kinder in the present and have more friends around you when you die.
You can be more thoughtful in the present and be less troubled by regret and so on.
Now this spirit does nothing but point.
It's more of a spectre,
Often depicted sort of like with the skyth,
Sort of like the personification of death.
But it's a robed figure and it doesn't say a word to Mr.
Scrooge.
It just takes him and he shows him things and he points with his skeletal finger.
And first he takes him to the home of the robustly happy and loving family of the Cratchit family.
And we see them all except for Bob.
And we see a crutch without an owner leaning against the fire and we realise Tiny Tim has died.
And they say,
Where's Dad,
Mum?
Where's Dad?
Bob Cratchit.
And she says,
You know,
He's been getting home later and later at night.
He walks so much more slowly now that he doesn't have Tim on his shoulders.
And Bob Cratchit comes in and he looks,
As one would,
Like a broken man,
A heartbroken man,
A sad smaller version of himself.
And he says,
You know,
I went to the cemetery.
You'd like it where they've laid him.
It's very green and there are trees.
And then he starts to weep and his children throw their arms around him.
And he says,
Please don't cry,
Dad.
Please don't cry.
And Scrooge is bereft.
He's very touched,
Maybe for the first time in 30 or 40 or 50 years.
He's truly touched at this beautiful little being,
This little warm loving kindness would harm no one and love everyone.
God bless us,
Everyone has died.
Sickness,
Old age and death,
The harbingers of truth that will come to us all.
The fourth is that of the path of awakening.
The path of an old age and death.
And then the holy life.
The way to be mortal and to be immortal in how we love and how we'll be.
This is one of the things in the future.
And again,
He says,
Can this be prevented?
What can we do?
Can anything be done so that Tiny Tim doesn't die?
And the spectre simply takes him to the next scene.
In the next scene,
He sees the other rocket scene at the funeral parlour where a washer woman has brought in some things to sell that she's clearly ripped off the body of a dead person.
We can figure out who that dead person in the future might be.
And she's rather loathsome woman.
And she's selling the very sheets that the dead body was in.
She's selling the night shirt,
The expensive night shirt that the dead body had been dressed in for its burial.
She's like,
I took it off and put,
You know,
Crappy one back on.
She's selling the bed curtains that went around the bed that she's torn down because they're made of a good brocade.
She can get some frickin' cash.
And they're laughing and joking about how not a single person will go to this horrible man's funeral.
Nobody gives a hoot that he's died.
And Scrooge very poignantly says,
I don't want to look.
I don't want to know.
I fear that is me.
And the ghost goes to pull back the sheet from over the dead body's face.
And Scrooge says,
Please don't show me.
I don't want to know.
And then they move forward and they go to the graveyard and the ghost points at a gravestone.
This is Ebenezer Scrooge,
Born,
You know,
1856 or whatever,
Died.
And there's snow covering it.
You can't quite see when he died.
And Scrooge is absolutely terrified.
The same way,
I want you to take this literally for a moment.
How would each of us feel if we were literally taken into the future and saw a dead body that we were pretty sure were us that everybody hated?
The only thing they were doing was stealing everything around us to at least get some money because we treated them so horribly.
We were so selfish and so miserly.
And we were pointed to our own grave,
Our own gravestone with our own birth date for me,
March 29,
64.
And we couldn't quite see the date of our death,
But we knew we were hated and unloved and that it was completely and utterly our doing.
There's another bit of data that comes.
There are three businessmen laughing about,
Did you hear so-and-so died?
Well,
I wouldn't go to his funeral when it says,
Ah,
I would go if lunch was provided.
And then a falls to his knees.
Scrooge is just devastated and he falls to his knees and he says to the ghost of Christmas future,
Is there no one,
Is there no one that feels any goodness towards this man who's died?
And the ghost points and we see a couple and they're standing in what we realize is the waiting room of Scrooge's lending and bank area.
And they're terrified.
They're weeping,
This couple.
And we think,
Oh,
They like Scrooge.
They're sad he's dead.
No.
What we learn is that Scrooge was holding their loan,
That they aren't able to make their payment this week.
And because of it,
Scrooge was going to take their house and kick them out into the street with their children.
And then they hear he's dead and they laugh and they are happy and they dance.
So there's someone who has good feeling about this man who's died.
But the good feeling is that he's died because they say whoever takes over our loan won't be as cruel as him.
They'll give us time to pay.
Scrooge is back in his bed.
Boom,
Bang,
Boom.
He wakes up and he can't believe it,
That he's alive.
He assumed he had died or would have died or was dying.
He wakes up and it's a bit like as one would.
And the sun is shining.
It's a cold,
Crisp,
Sunny winter's day.
There's snow on the ground.
He gets up and then he variously,
Interpretations,
Does a dig,
Does a dance,
Is absolutely giddy with delight.
I'm alive.
I'm here.
He says the spirits did it all in one night.
Oh,
My goodness.
And he throws up the window and he looks out and he yells down to the boy in the lane.
He says,
You boy,
You boy there.
What day is it?
And the guy looks at him,
The young lad looks at him like he's a maniac and says,
Well,
It's Christmas Day,
Of course.
He says,
What is Christmas Day?
Oh,
I get a chance to do it again.
Imagine,
Because we have this opportunity.
So imagine the actual truth.
We have the opportunity every morning to wake up and begin again.
We have the opportunity every morning to wake up and to lead with heart,
To lead with generosity instead of selfishness.
We have the opportunity to lead with loving kindness instead of anger and aversion.
We have the opportunity to lead with wisdom,
Seeing life is short.
What is our purpose?
How can we serve?
How can we love?
Who cares what mistakes anybody's made in the past?
Can we meet them as they are right now?
And Scrooge tears through that Christmas Day.
He throws some money down to the kid and he says,
Go around the corner.
Do they still have the prize working,
Prize winning turkey hanging in the window of the butchers?
And the boy says,
You mean the turkey that's bigger than me?
And Scrooge says,
Yes,
You boy.
What a wonderful boy.
What a remarkable boy.
Yes,
Yes,
Yes.
I want you to go buy it.
Bring the butcher back with the turkey.
If you do it double quick,
I'll give you two shillings.
The kid runs off,
Comes back with the butcher and Scrooge runs out and he hires a cab,
A horse drawn carriage,
And he puts the butcher and the world's biggest turkey in and he sends it anonymously to Bob Cratchit's house.
So they'll have a proper Christmas turkey.
He then runs into the street,
Gives all sorts of money to the Christmas carolers that he's been horrible to and kicked out of his house before.
And he runs into the man from the charity to whom he'd just been evil and vile and spiteful the day before.
Anybody other than me ever been evil,
Vile or spiteful the day before?
I know I have.
What would you do if you had a chance to do it again?
What would you do if you had a chance to with hat in hand,
Be humble and kind and say,
I am so sorry for my greed,
Hatred and delusion.
I am so sorry for my blindness.
I am so sorry I didn't give.
Please,
Here's a vast amount of money.
He says,
There's many back payments involved in the payment.
I'm giving you.
He whispers it in his ear.
He says,
Please help as many people as you can.
Feed them,
Clothe them,
Keep them warm.
Bring them blessings.
Imagine if you and I were wealthy beyond words.
Imagine if we could in 1993 go to the downtown Eastside.
Imagine if you can go in 2020 into downtown Nanaimo,
Downtown Duncan.
We've got people freezing without homes on the streets.
We've got persons on fentanyl and drug addictions dying of the opioid crisis,
Which is getting overshadowed by the pandemic of Covid.
If you could go and help,
If you could give abundantly,
Warmth,
Food,
Medical treatment,
Love,
Caring and eye to eye compassionate connection to those less fortunate,
Of course.
Wouldn't we all?
But sometimes we forget.
Sometimes we get scared.
Sometimes we don't think we have enough to give.
And more often than not,
We're simply ignorant.
We just forget to remember to give.
We forget to remember to judge less and love more.
We forget to remember that every morning is Christmas morning.
Every morning is a chance to begin again.
And every morning is a chance to be the best version of who we can be today,
Because today is all we've ever got.
And so Scrooge goes back after giving the money,
After sending the kindness to Bob Cratchit and family,
And he gets dressed in his finery and his finest top hat.
And he goes with humility,
With grace and not knowing if he'll be accepted.
And he knocks on the door of his nephew,
Fred.
And they are absolutely stopped in their tracks.
Conversation shatters to a halt.
Everybody stares at the horrible miserly,
Nasty,
Selfish jerk of an uncle who's walked in.
And he takes off his hat and literally hat in hand,
He says.
I'm here for Christmas dinner,
If you'll have me.
And in that moment,
I think one of the most important moments of the story,
Fred,
The nephew,
He's always treated so horrible.
He's always blamed for killing his sister at childbirth,
Has a moment where he gets to choose whether to accept this horrible,
Filthy,
Nasty man and give him a chance to begin anew.
Or whether to do what the majority of us would do,
Which is say you're not welcome in this house because of past hurts,
Because of past karma,
Because of things that no longer exist that you did,
Said or thought or meant or didn't mean yesterday or seven years ago or 24 years ago.
Because of the past,
You're not welcome here.
Instead,
Fred says,
Of course,
Uncle,
You are welcome.
Merry,
Merry Christmas from the others crowd around and give him a hug and a handshake and say welcome.
It's lovely to have you here.
May we all be that lucky that when we have the courage to say,
I've made a mistake.
Will you see me fresh?
Will you see me with the fresh eyes of awakening?
Will you see me with the fresh eyes of this moment?
Let the scales fall from your eyes and see me as I am.
See beyond my petty greed,
Hatred and delusion to which all beings,
Unless you're a fully awake Buddha and I sure am not yet,
All beings have some greed,
Hatred and delusion.
Are you willing to see beyond the greed,
Hatred and delusion of me,
This imperfect being,
And accept me in my moment of grace right now where I tried to begin again?
And Fred and friends and family embrace Scrooge and he,
He himself carves the roast beast.
Oh,
Wait,
That's from the Grinch.
And then our tale is almost done,
But it goes on and the narrator tells us that Tiny Tim,
Scrooge became a wonderful benefactor and uncle to Tiny Tim.
He got him the best medical care and better food and he was a marvellous man and Tiny Tim thrived and we see that Tiny Tim does wonderfully well and calls Scrooge,
Uncle Scrooge.
But first,
On Christmas Day,
Scrooge,
Boxing Day,
The next day,
He needs to play a little joke on poor Bob Cratchit.
So Scrooge is,
You know,
Bob Cratchit has no idea that Scrooge has had an epiphany of awakening in the last 24 hours.
So he comes to work,
Scrooge is there,
Bob Cratchit is 16 minutes late and he comes in and Scrooge says,
You're late.
He says,
I'm so sorry,
Sir,
I was making rather merry last night.
I'll make up for it at the end of the day.
He says,
No,
You won't.
No,
You won't.
You will never make up for this again.
And you know he's about to fire him except we kind of think he might not be.
Instead,
He says,
I'm going to punish you.
I'm done with it.
This is intolerable.
So I'm going to double your salary.
Bob Cratchit looks like you punched him in the face,
Completely confused.
Scrooge has clearly had a stroke or lost his mind.
He says,
I'm going to help you raise that beautiful family of yours.
I'm going to help however I can.
You know,
And before we do anything else,
And he gives him a bunch of coins,
He says,
Go out and buy us another scuttle of coal.
Let's bank the fires.
Let's make it warm in here.
Bob's going,
What's just happened?
This is what happens when our greed,
Hatred and delusion temporarily or maybe permanently goes away.
We are simply generous.
We are simply wise and we are simply caring about others because the Bodhicitta is shining inside.
We want to be generous.
We want to help others.
And so we see in the future that Scrooge becomes a wonderful boss,
A wonderful neighbour.
He's a great supporter of charities,
Of good causes.
He supports Tiny Tim and the family.
He becomes very close to his nephew and his nephew's family.
And he becomes,
As the story comes to a close,
They say it was said of Ebenezer Scrooge for the rest of his days that he kept Christmas well.
Who will we be when we decide every day is Christmas Day?
Every day is the birth of the light into the darkness.
Every day is the birth of hope and transformation and awakening,
Compassion and wisdom.
Every breath we take is Christmas.
Every moment is Christmas.
Every moment we let the scales fall from our eyes and we see the possibility of love.
The possibility of awakening.
The possibility of choice in this moment to say something spiteful and mean back to you because I feel hurt.
Or to say something kind and accepting back to you because whatever you did or didn't do or say probably simply means that you're feeling hurt.
Every moment our small hearts can grow three sizes this day and we can transform,
Which is why Dr Seuss's The Grinch,
He stole Christmas.
Which is why the gorgeous story of The Christmas Carol,
Which is why so many marvellous books,
Movies and stories and fables stand the test of times over decades.
Because they speak to something deep inside us that knows.
Something the elephant deep inside us that knows the difference between greed and generosity.
That knows the difference between hatred and fear versus kindness and love.
That knows the difference between selfish,
Ego-based ignorance and the acceptance of connection of all beings.
And that we are all the same and we all struggle and we are all,
As one of my dear friends used to say,
Just bozos on this bus trying to get there the best way we can.
So I love the story and I invite all of you to read the story or watch one of the many movie interpretation.
Heck,
There's even a Muppet Christmas Carol if you're a Kermit fan.
So we got the green puppet thing going on and ask yourself who was I in my Christmas past?
Who am I in this Christmas present?
And what does the future look like if I continue on the course I'm on?
What minor course corrections can we make?
Maybe some even major course corrections can we make?
More Dharma,
More time serving others,
More forgiveness of our foibles,
Being more kind to ourselves when we deal with our mental,
Emotional or physical pain.
Spending a bit more of our day reading something uplifting,
Wholesome or important and less of it watching the news.
What are the tiny,
Eat more vegetables or giant,
Quit my job,
Semi-retire and do what I really want to do that is serving people less fortunate than I or growing beautiful vegetables and selling them in a stand.
What small or large course corrections,
What karmic events that simply taking action,
Cause equals effect,
Not necessarily in a linear way,
But what changes would each of us make if we were visited tonight by visions of our past,
Our present and our possible futures?
I know I'd make a few changes and I ask myself that sort of question a lot,
A lot and I try my own clumsy and perfect way to make course corrections so that more and more I am living a life that is more in alignment with how I wish to live a life,
A life of service,
A life of learning,
A life of compassion,
A life of abundance,
Spending time with incredible people like you.
I very much hope we'll be on retreat again,
Maybe this summer or fall on Denman Island,
On Galliano at Bethlehem,
That we will be able to support each other in our awakening and our past that we'll be able to move from our essential Scrooge nature into an Ebenezer nature that again,
Our hearts can grow three sizes today.
So a few words about a holiday themed Dharma talk and I'm not stretching this,
I invite you to watch that movie or read the book.
It's an astounding study of the fundamental poisons of the mind,
Why they develop,
The causes and conditions that leads him to be such a poisonous person and the simplicity of the scales falling from his eyes,
Clear seeing,
Wisdom,
Seeing reality as it actually is,
Does what seeing reality does.
Yes,
Can make us frightened,
Bitter and despairing,
But can also,
And it will also if you give it time,
Open our good hearts to compassion for ourselves and others,
Move us to want to help make the world a better,
Safer,
More loving place,
Move us to want to endorse and support and listen to voices of reason and thoughtfulness and kindness instead of voices of fear and hatred and confusion.
To a simply begin again,
This very moment to simply allow in the symbolism of the Christmas season of the winter solstice in our hemisphere turning on December 21st,
A few short days from now from the shortest day of the year.
We get the next day another minute or three of daylight here in the Pacific Northwest,
Don't we?
And the day after that we get another minute or three of daylight.
I love this time of year as we are reminded that there's nothing wrong with the darkness and it's always followed by the light.
This is in my biased view,
My simple view,
The true meaning of Christmas.
Being reminded of the light,
Being reminded of rebirth,
Being reminded of redemption,
Being reminded of the passionate ability to create heaven on earth in this moment here and now,
And the light that is always there in the darkness,
Even in the blackest,
Blackest night.
The light is with us and we simply need to remember and begin again.
So I hope that was helpful in some small way to some of us and I would like to end with a very brief,
Warm,
Pink hearted,
Centered meditation.
Simply breathing in and breathing out into your own good heart and the beauty of this is that my good heart and your good heart are the same and it's neither my heart nor your heart.
It is simply heart.
It is simply loving kindness.
It is simply compassion.
In our grinchness,
In our scroogeness,
In our spitefulness,
In our fear,
We are abundant with warm,
Pink loving kindness.
We only lose it when we're confused,
But it is never lost.
So simply sinking in to connecting through breathing into our own good heart and breathing out from our own good heart that is not our heart.
It is simply the heart of loving kindness.
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