A little Indonesian man

I started a new job a couple weeks ago, and the store is on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. The promenade is full of people, from rich and passing through to those who live in the area around trash bins behind the storefronts. I generally ride my bike to work, park and lock it directly in front of the store, then go to work. When I leave I repeat in reverse. I try to avoid the local wildlife as much as possible so I can get back to my semi-clean house with aging groceries. Normally I avoid the scores of homeless folks holding creatively-worded signs with dirty hands. My favorite was "Original poem for a donation." Usually I steer clear of the black men gathering cash for Sudanese genocide relief and the Asians asking which question on a card I would prefer to answer, but today fortune had something else in store for me.

I was unlocking my bike outside the store and, before I could think of some great reason for this small-framed Asian guy to leave me, he shoved a laminated card in front of me and asked which question most appealed to me. There were seven questions. One was "Does God exist?" All of the others were of the metaphysical variety, dealing with the way life operates from a mostly theoretical perspective. I chose "What is the purpose of life?" I naively figured this man wasn't too intelligent, thinking that anyone asking questions on a 4 x 6 card couldn't be particularly wise. I said that the purpose of life was to have fun. To do what one wants. To create one's own destiny. This was true, and I believed it all, but it was insufficient to him.

The man was an Indonesian native with an accent, but sharp intellect and broad vocabulary. His name was Bastam, and when he spoke he looked sharply through his glasses. When I spoke he listened intently as I struggled to find words for things I had only ever said in my mind. We went into detail and he asked where I gained my philosophy. I replied that I didn't know. I had never been asked these questions, much less where I found the answers. I knew it would have been a cop-out and superficial answer to say that I had learned it just through living. The ideas came from somewhere.

A fifty-something homeless woman in a wheelchair, whom I had seen many times before next the the tree beside which Bastam and I were talking, rolled up and assumed her normal post.

I told Bastam that I had started reading Buddhism as a hobby 3-4 years ago and learned a lot about impermanence and detachment from one's emotions from that. I told him how I realized a few years ago that all humans are self-interested and that it became, in a way, a self-fulfilling prophesy for me: I realized that I needed to start living for myself.

"Do you think there is a way to measure success?" He asked.

"It's all relative," I replied. Success is measured differently by everyone, but success that can be measured is destined to become insufficient. I used the example of a new car. If I go buy a new car and drive it off the lot, I feel great because I have a great car, and I have a newer car than almost everyone on the road. Am I successful at this point? Does my life have purpose that can be tangibly measured by my income? Not really. As soon as I drive that car off the lot it loses 25% of its value, plus I have to maintain it. Everyday I drive it is a day it becomes less cool that I am driving that particular car. The only way to be satisfied is to detach from the emotions that made me happy in the first place and realize that those emotions, like my car's new car scent, are impermanent.

We talked about the things that make people happy. Cars, sex, money, work, surfing. We decided together that you could in fact have too much of the above. It is diminishing marginal utility. Last night I watched a show in lottery winners. All of them destroyed their lives after winning the lotto. The only difference was the money. We agreed that the only thing people could not have too much of was happiness. Britney Spears is reputed to have said to a homeless man that he had a better life that she does, presumably the difference was the size (or mere presence) of their bank accounts. She would probably have said that she has too much money and that ruined her. Nobody has ever claimed to have had too much happiness. It is what we all crave but can't figure out how to get. Of course, the second noble truth (that suffering is caused by craving) might explain why that gets in the way.

Bastam seemed shocked by most of what I said. I am not quite sure why. After all, I didn't make this all up. This is my interpretation of Eastern philosophy, modern philosophy and life lessons. "You should be teaching classes on this, you could make a lot of money," he said. I denied the truth of that, and still do. But the reason he suggested this was that I had finally broken down what many people have refused to break down. I told him that people were self-interested, that all things were impermanent and paradoxically said that our emotions are the things getting in the way of our being happy. I told him that we are the creators of our own lives, the reckoners of our own purposes and the authors of our own lives. No second is wasted when I do what I want. Since I don't believe in a presiding, omnipotent God, I am the only person who is going to be able to create what I want to create with my life.

I was getting cold and beginning to shake under my jacket. I told Bastam that it was time for me to go but it was great talking to him and that I would definitely see him again around the promenade. We shook hands and he told me his name and his home country. "Great waves in Indonesia," I said, referring to what I had said we he asked what made me happy.

"Hey," the homeless woman said to me. Last week she had, suprisingly poignantly, lectured me on why my store should move some potted plants that had been placed on the roof above the entrance. "Check this out."

She handed me a card that read "NAH MYOHO RENGE KYO The key to unlocking your highest potential" on one side and "Soka Gakkal International-USA, Buddhism for modern living" on the opposite.

I said goodbye to the pair and rode away. I was happy. I had vocally tapped into an area which I had only explored mentally. The dialogue had gained two more dimensions, the Indonesian man and the homeless woman. I felt like we were all on the same page. We are all just doing what we can to stay happy.