Pain, Suffering, Refuge: Part 2

A story of cause and effect, by Jude.

Continued from Pain, Suffering, Refuge: Intermission.

The country club seemed empty for a Friday night. Even so, I hustled to and from the kitchen clearing and setting tables, wondering where the other busboy had gone. 

I pushed open the kitchen’s swinging doors and made for the basket of wrapped silver when Eddie, my fellow busser, came around the corner looking like he picked a fight with a honey badger at a landfill. His mouth stretched to stifle a cry and revealed those braces he always tried to hide. His swollen, red eyes dripped tears carving channels through a layer of muck covering his freckles. A string of banana peel drooped from his mop of brick red hair and spots of ketchup, hollandaise sauce, and some brown stuff covered his uniform. He shot a sideways look at me through the puddles in his eyes, then punched open the doors and ran.

“Don't mess with Jude!” 

Brian, the head chef, glowered in the direction Eddie ran, and the short order cook, Kenny, rubbed the gunk from his hands on his apron and slapped them together as if casting off the last bits of slimy filth.

I looked toward the door, then back at them, and blinked, shaking my head. “What was that about?”

Brian nodded toward the doors. “We heard that kid bullied you. So, we made sure he knows that’s a bad idea.” 

“We might have thrown him in the dumpster,” Kenny added. “Don't worry, Jude. He's not going to bother you anymore.” 

They laughed, gave each other a high five, and, like nothing happened, they went back to their respective stations.

Eddie stood a few inches taller than me with a slight frame and an attitude like a hungry rattlesnake.

Back in middle school he hunted me on my walk home from the bus stop. He wouldn’t just tease me or annoy me but would also try to run me over with his bike. I learned to cut through people's backyards to reach the drainage ditch that ran between the streets so I could avoid him. And when that failed, I learned to run fast. 

Eddie had been working at the country club for only a few weeks and, though still rather disagreeable, he pretty much left me alone. By the time we worked together as juniors in high school, it had been years since he caused me trouble. At sixteen I had my core group of friends, so I had all the allies and protection I needed (one of my friends even knew Kung Fu. Or at least he convinced us he did). 

So, while I appreciated Brian’s and Kenny’s unwavering support, it came a couple of years late. But more importantly, as grown men doing what they did, they made themselves worse than the bully.

I always wondered about what happened later. 

From what I know, Eddie was a free-range kid who got nothing but bad examples from his parents. Or maybe they did their best, but between the three jobs they needed to keep a roof over their heads, he never got the guidance he required. He had a rough start to life and transmited all his pain to bugs, animals, and smaller kids from the Catholic school. 

I can look back now and have compassion for him. Heck, even then I didn't think he deserved to be covered in kitchen muck.

Throwing a bully in the dumpster might have felt like the right thing to do, a way to stand up for the underdog, and a great scene from a teen movie where the bad kid gets it in the end. But in real life, I didn't need any protection, at least not in that way. I could see in Eddie’s eyes that this event would only increase the suffering in the world. 

That memory might someday reincarnate as his anger at coworkers, isolation from friends, or abuse of children. And so, the cycle of suffering would continue.

So much of the pain and suffering of the world is rooted in the perpetrator’s own suffering. Angie Thomas reminds us that Tupac Shakur got it right when he spoke about THUG LIFE: “The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody.”

Every action has an effect. Imagine dropping a pebble in still water. There's a splash and ripples radiate in all directions until their energy dissipates. Our actions and their effects are much the same way. 

If we find ourselves in the ripples from some past action – that is, when we end up in the causes and conditions that past action created – we have a choice. 

When faced with conditions that cause suffering, our goal should be to become like a reef, an island, or a cliff preventing that wave of suffering from spreading into the future.

And when faced with conditions that relieve suffering, we should add as much energy as we have, increasing its amplitude and driving it onward. 

Perhaps we should also consider how others will have to deal with the ripples we create.

The Buddha taught a path to end suffering, a middle path which allows us to experience the fullness of life in all its beauty (and fun!) but without our desires binding us. To be fully in the world but not of it. Honestly, even if you don't know what the path is, you're doing well if you choose action that does not cause more harm.

…To be continued.

This is a work of fiction based on actual events.

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