Dharma Road: A Short CAB Ride to Self-Discovery - Softcover

Haycock, Brian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1571746358 ISBN 13: 9781571746351

Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing Co, 2010

Synopsis

Brain Haycock was a cabdriver--who happened to be a Buddhist. During the course of his career as a cabdriver, he learned that each fare provided an opportunity to learn the life lessons of the Buddha. So, hop in and buckle up; we'll be making several stops on this trip. We're off on our journey to self-discovery, passing through the precepts, the four noble truths, taking a hard left to stop and get coffee--where we'll learn a few breathing techniques to bolster our patience--all the while watching for ambulances and bikers, focusing our attention and awareness so that we can arrive at our destination in good time and in one piece. Here are stories from everyday life that demonstrate how we can all benefit from a little Buddhist philosophy or practice. With each chapter focusing on a specific topic, readers will learn to coast their way to building a life routine, focusing the mind, calming themselves with breathing exercises, and much much more.

About this title

About the Author

Brian Haycock is a writer and former cab driver residing in Austin, TX. He currently works for a non-profit and secretly misses driving a cab. This is his first book.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

DHARMA ROAD

A SHORT CAB RIDE TO SELF-DISCOVERY

By Brian Haycock

Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Brian Haycock
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57174-635-1

Contents

Introduction: Driving with a Mind Wide Open, 
1. Start Your Engines, 
2. This Suffering World, 
3. Craving Attachment, 
4. The Eightfold Freeway, 
5. The Mind of the Rookie, 
6. I Got Attitude, 
7. The Cabdrivers' Maintenance Plan, 
8. Attention, Attention, Attention, 
9. Sitting, Not Thinking, 
10. Stop and Smell the Hot Java, 
11. Get a Grip, 
12. Ac-Ac-Ac-Ac, 
13. Crosstown Traffic, 
14. What I Like, 
15. Clean-Up Time, 
16. Fishing the Moonlight, 
17. Blue Monday, 
18. Thank You, Thank You, 
19. The Right Life, 
20. Loving Loving-kindness, 
21. Listen to This, 
22. On the Road to Road Rage, 
23. Let's Fuck with the Cabdriver, 
24. Not Much to Fear, 
25. The Sangha Gang, 
26. In the Shallow End, 
27. A Drive Down Party Lane, 
28. Karma for Kabbies, 
29. The End of the Road, 
30. Metaphysical Me, 
31. Maps and Words, 
32. God Hides in the Traffic, 
33. The Lights Come On (Or at Least Blink), 
34. New Year's Eve, 
Conclusion: Farther Down the Road, 
Appendix: Airport Reading, 

CHAPTER 1

START YOUR ENGINES

Every journey has to start somewhere. For most people taking up a spiritualpractice, the starting point is a personal crisis of some kind. It doesn't haveto be something dramatic. We're simply unhappy with the way things are and wewant to try a different way of living. So we find a new job, a new girlfriend,move to another city. Or we look into a spiritual practice.

If things are going well and we're happy with our lives, we probably won't wantto change anything.

It was like that for me. I'd quit drinking, cut way back on some other things. Ithought my life would change for the better, and in some ways it did, but I justfelt empty. Getting rid of bad habits wasn't enough for me. I had to replacethem with something better. So I signed up for an adult education course:Introduction to Zen Buddhism. It could have been Santeria or Channeling YourInner Space Alien. I didn't put a lot of research into it. I got lucky. A verynice woman taught the course at her suburban home, with meditation practice inher basement zendo. She was a great teacher, and the class immediately becamethe high point of my week. It was a perfect way to get started.

Buddhist history is filled with stories of Zen masters who forced theirdisciples to wait by the gates of the temple for years to show theirdetermination before they could begin practice. One disciple is said to have cutoff his arm and presented it to the master to gain admission. They don't do thatnow. In major cities, people can walk into a Zen center, get some basicinstruction, and start attending functions. Usually there's not much training.Maybe a brief lecture, some instructions on zazen, the Zen style of meditation.Then the newcomers join the activities and figure it out as they go along.Outside the cities, people with an interest in Zen might form their own zendoand help each other to learn. Others just buy a few books and a cushion to siton and start out on their own. In the end, it doesn't really matter. You get outof it what you put in. No matter where you start, it's up to you to make itwork.

It's the same with cabdriving. You're on your own, and you can do what you want.You can sit at the airport and wait for the money to roll in, and when itdoesn't you can blame the company for not training you well enough. Then you cangive up. But if you make the effort, it can work out well for you even withoutany real training. And you might have a good time doing it. It's not how youstart—it's how you proceed.

Cabdrivers usually start out when things are going wrong. Most of them show upat the cab company as a last resort after other things have fallen through. Noone writes cabdriving in their high school yearbook next to career path. Theyjust need a job, any job, to see them through until something better comesalong.

That was how I started. I'd worked for an environmental organization for anumber of years only to find myself unemployed, broke, and without any realprospects. I knew I'd face some very hard times if I didn't come up withsomething fast. There was an ad in the paper. I didn't really put a lot ofresearch into it. I went in. I got lucky. Two days later, I was a trainee.That's right, a cabdriver trainee. I was so proud.

The company training program goes on for hours, but most of it is just commonsense. The cab business is pretty simple. People get in the cab, tell you wherethey're going. You drive them there, they pay what the meter says (plus a nicetip), and get out. Then it starts all over again. There's a dispatcher on theradio, putting out calls using a simple set of procedures. You can take calls,letting the calls lead you around. You can sit in cabstands at hotels andrestaurants or in a long line at the airport. You can cruise around downtown,see what happens there. You can work the late-night business, covering the clubsdowntown. And you can watch the veteran drivers, see how they do things, learnwhat you can from them.

In Austin, some drivers own their own cabs and pay a weekly fee to one of thecompanies to cover insurance, permits, and dispatch service. Other drivers leasetheir cabs. Between the payments and the cost of gas, it can cost a driver morethan a hundred dollars a day to stay on the road. That's not easy to make up. Alot of drivers wind up falling behind on their payments and find themselves outof the business. You have to stay focused, and you have to put in the hours. Thecompany training program doesn't really dwell on any of this. If the rookiedrivers knew what was coming, they'd probably make a run for it while theycould.

Something good about the cab industry: since the drivers are paying the company,rather than the other way around, it's fairly hard to get fired. It happens, butyou have to really mess up. In one of the Austin cabdriving legends, a drivermanaged to run over a passenger who'd gotten out of his cab. Then he drove away.He got fired, but it took the company a week to make the decision.

That story may or may not be true. No one really knows. There are a lot ofstories around, and some of them must be true. The streets are paved with urbanlegends. But the point is, if you've driven a cab, you know: it could happen.It's a pretty strange business.

But then, most businesses are pretty strange. Once you get inside and see whatreally goes on, you wonder how anything useful ever gets done. Everywhere I'veworked I've seen colossal screw-ups, gross incompetence, and outright larceny.Everyone laughs about it over an after-work beer, and nothing ever seems toreally change. If you've ever had a job, you know: the working world is acircus. And the clowns are running the show.

Here's another cabdriving story: One night a driver got a package delivery fromthe airport going to a hospital. It was a cooler, like you'd use for beer. Itwas kind of a long drive, and he was tired, so he stopped off at home, figuringhe'd get some sleep and finish the trip in the morning. After all, it was just apackage. You guessed it. There was an organ in the cooler. The cab company hadto send another driver to wake him up, collect the cooler, and bring it to thehospital. This sounds crazy, but I'm pretty sure this one actually happened.(No, it wasn't me, and hey, thanks a lot for thinking that.)

For my training, I watched a fifteen-minute video on the proper way to deal withcustomers. It starred a cabdriver who was polite past the point of beingannoying. He looked like a dorky Richard Pryor character from an old movie. Hewas actually wearing a tie. Then I went out with a veteran driver to spend partof a shift on the streets with him, learning the ropes. He laid rubber gettingout of the cab lot.

And he wasn't wearing a tie.

Of course, out here on Dharma Road, we're not really focused on making money.And we're not worried about the inner workings of the cab industry. It doesn'treally matter what kind of work we're doing. Most of us are putting a huge chunkof our lives into our jobs, so we'd better get something out of them besides apaycheck. On Dharma Road, we're in this for spiritual growth. Development.Enlightenment, even. We're here to learn something about the way our lives movealong these streets, how to make them move more smoothly. How to make them leadsomewhere.

We're here to experience our true nature.

Okay, that's enough of the driver training. Now let's get to work.

CHAPTER 2

THIS SUFFERING WORLD

It's around noon on a Tuesday. I take a call at an AIDS clinic in a strip mallnear the interstate. It's a place for patients without insurance. There's ablack woman standing under the awning out of the sun. She looks about thirty,but it's hard to be sure. She's thin—too thin for this life—and she's crying. Ipull up, she gets in the back. It takes her three tries to tell me where she'sgoing. "St. David's," she finally tells me, then she starts crying again. St.David's Hospital.

It's a short trip. A half mile. A few minutes. When I pull up at the entrance,she hands me a tear-stained cab voucher. I wish her good luck, but I don't thinkher luck is going to change that much. I watch her walk in through the slidingglass doors, maybe for the last time. She stops in the lobby and stands there amoment, looking lost.

For the next few hours, I work the streets, thinking about the woman and whatshe must be going through. Being admitted to the hospital. Going through tests.Seeing the sadness on the faces of the nurses when they look at her. She'sscared. Maybe she's alone. Maybe she'll die that way.

The afternoon wears on. It's hot and getting hotter. I'm sitting third in thecabstand outside the Omni, drinking bitter, lukewarm coffee from a Styrofoamcup. I'm thinking about the way my life is going—I'm struggling to make rent,let alone save enough to make a way out of the cab business to something better.I haven't been sleeping well, and I have trouble getting up when I have to. I'vegot a molar starting to act up and an ache in my lower back from trying towrestle a hundred-pound suitcase into the trunk. If everything goes well today,I'll be out here tomorrow, doing it all over again. If anything goes wrong, Imight not be here at all.

This is my life now: ninety hours a week in a cab, hustling fares, fightingtraffic. It wasn't supposed to be this way. My life was going to mean something.I was going to make a difference. I was going to save the world from itself. Itdidn't happen.

Maybe you had a dream like that. Maybe yours didn't come true either.

"Life is suffering," the Buddha said, and he wasn't kidding around. It's not theuplifting, cheery message you'd expect from the man you see in the statues, thechubby guy with the serene smile and kind eyes. Life is suffering. That was theBuddha's original insight, the one that led him to develop a system of moralsand ethics, a program of transformative psychology and a set of guidelines fordeep spiritual development.

Everything begins with suffering.

The Buddha was born a prince in a small Indian kingdom. For his first twenty-nineyears, he was protected from the harsh realities of life by his dotingfather. He stayed mostly on the palace grounds, living in luxury, his everydesire fulfilled. But he knew there was more to life than simple indulgence.When he finally left the palace and saw the real world for the first time, hewas shocked to see the way the common people lived, the hardships that filledtheir lives. He saw a beggar, a sick person, an old man, and a corpse. Justseeing them changed his life. Poverty, sickness, old age, and death. He wasdetermined to understand why there was so much suffering in life and to learnhow it could be overcome. He abandoned his life of privilege and became awandering monk. Everything in the Buddha's teachings, everything he learnedabout the human condition, began with that original quest.

I'm watching four young men stand around as a bellman loads their golf bags intothe back end of a white stretch limo. They're looking good, wearing their Ban-Lonshirts and their Ray-Ban shades, tanned and fit and more or less rich,heading out to some country club for a round of golf, drinks, some dinner,whatever they want. They don't look like they're suffering all that much.

Maybe they don't need to know about the Buddha's search for understanding. Nottoday, at least.

But it won't always be this way. During their lives, trouble will find them. Itwon't all be stretch limos and drinks at the country club, prime ribs on thepatio. Today could be the high-water mark of their lives, the day they'll alwaysremember, the one they'll wish they could go back to. Tomorrow it could all gowrong, and they could be left shattered by the loss of what they once had. Itcan happen.

For most of us, there won't be a spectacular fall. Life is more subtle thanthat. For most people, life is a mixture of good times and bad. And the betterthe good times are, the harder the hard times seem. The people who have theeasiest lives just get spoiled. They never learn how to cope. They don't thinkthey'll ever have to. Think of Britney Spears going off on a crying jag becauseher little accessory dog crapped on her $10,000 gown. Or Paris Hilton crying forher mother as she took that limo ride to her week in jail. She could use acouple weeks in Darfur to gain some perspective. Or she could try driving a cabfor a while, just to see.

Psychologists have studied happiness as a social and cultural phenomenon.Surprisingly, they've found that people today are no happier than they were ahundred years ago, or two hundred years ago, or at any other time in recordedhistory. Rates of depression are up, and there's no end in sight. All thematerial progress that's been made hasn't translated into real happiness. Andthe rich aren't much happier than other people. Outside of the truly destitute,there is very little correlation between wealth and happiness. The cabdriversare about as happy as the trust fund kids riding out to the club for a day ofgolf. They just have different things to complain about. And to appreciate.

Consider Elvis. Once he was the king of the world. He was the King. If anyoneshould have been able to avoid suffering, it would have been Elvis. He hadeverything he could ever want, and if he ever saw something else he wanted, hecould have had that just by pointing to it. And yet his life turned into anordeal of emptiness and sorrow, ending in a drug overdose that killed him whilehe sat on a toilet. If Elvis couldn't achieve real happiness in this life, isthere hope for any of us?

Sometimes when I get home, I turn on the TV to help me unwind, and I watch a fewminutes of one of those celebrity shows that cover the tragic lives of the iconsof our culture. (What can I say? I get home at three in the morning and I don'thave cable.) It's a litany of DUIs, eating disorders, and secret heartbreaks.The storybook weddings all seem to end in bitter divorce. How many of the mostfortunate wind up in jail, rehab, or both? Too many to count. Or even careabout.

And those are the rich and famous people, the ones who've made it big. Thecelebrities. In a culture obsessed with celebrity, even the celebrities suffer.And so does everyone else, just not in the glare of the spotlights. Take a walkthrough your local supermarket or down your own Main Street and have a good lookat the people you see. Are they happy? Are they satisfied with their lives? Areyou?

That's not to say that life is nothing but suffering. Of course it isn't. Thereare some great ups and crushing downs and a lot of in-betweens. Life is long,and some of it's a lot of fun. But some of it's hard to take. Or it's short, andthat's even harder. Like Jim Morrison said, "The future's uncertain and the endis always near." He was right. He turned to heroin to ease his pain, and he diedafter a few years in the spotlight and a slow slide into darkness.

Out on the streets in a cab, you see plenty of suffering. You meet elderlypassengers, some of them fading away, some of them already gone. There are sadand hopeless drunks stumbling around, telling their troubles to the cabdriverafter the bartender stops listening. There are crackheads out at four in themorning, hoping to score. There are patients going home from the hospital,heading to clinics for treatment, moving from there to the hospital to die.People who know their lives are running out. Some days, living in this world canjust break your heart.

Depressed yet? Don't be. There's a road that leads through the suffering. A roadthat rises above. We're coming to it.

The guys at the Omni are in the limo now, pulling out, headed for the golfcourse. Maybe it won't rain out there today. Maybe they'll have a great game andcap it off with a perfectly done surf-and-turf dinner in the clubhouse. Maybetheir lives will go on this way forever, free of suffering. I really hope so.But I doubt it. Instead of going out to the course today, they could be settingout with us on a journey of self-discovery. They could be learning about theirtrue nature and learning to rise above the sorrows of life. They could all bebuddhas someday.

Maybe they'll get started on that tomorrow.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from DHARMA ROAD by Brian Haycock. Copyright © 2010 Brian Haycock. Excerpted by permission of Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing Co
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1571746358
• ISBN 13: 9781571746351
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256