Heroes Not Zombies

At Otagi Nenbutsu-ji outside of Kyoto, there is an extraordinary display of sculptures – read more about them here. They are all small figures, but the emphasis is on the faces. Each one was created by a different person, so each one is completely unique. You can see several of them if you click on the link in the first sentence of this post.

This particular one has a gorgeous expression. What does this convey to you? To me, it conveys delight, happiness, contentment, and a certain open hearted, loving sense of wonder. I know, I know, what we experience is an interplay that emerges from the connection between ourselves and whatever we have engaged with, so a lot of what this conveys to me comes from personal disposition and preferences. But that’s just how life is. You can’t take your subjective reality out of your daily experience!

What effect does this expression have one you? Because it does have an effect. It calms me. It soothes me. It stirs feelings of love and kindness in my heart. And as those emotions start to flow, they will change the complex balance of chemicals in my body, boosting my immune system and calming down my inflammatory system. Isn’t that amazing? I can change the chemical status of my “inner environment” and so my state of health by what I choose to engage with.

We do this all the time. Subconsciously for the most part, but we do it all the same. Our inner state, and our wellbeing, change constantly in response to the signals and triggers we encounter every day, and according to our own reaction and response patterns and habits. We can become more aware of them, and when we do, we can move more of our lives from react-mode to response-mode which frees us up from living in auto-pilot, or what I call “zombie living”. That lets us become more autonomous, more able to develop new patterns of response, and, yes, even reaction. More able to develop new behaviours, new habits, and new patterns of thought.

That’s the first thing I wanted to share with you when I looked at this image again today, but there’s something else too.

As we walk around our every day world there is one face we don’t see – our own. OK, we can see the mirror image of our face (which isn’t what other people see) and we can see photos of ourselves (look how many selfies people take nowadays!) so we do have opportunities to be able to see our faces. But we have to stop what we are doing and change our expressions to do both of those things. We can’t see the “live view” which other people have…..the expressions on our faces when we meet them, when we converse with them, when we engage with them.

Yet, look again at this image – it’s clear, isn’t it, that the facial expression has an effect on you? Well, that’s true of you as well. Your facial expression is having an effect on everyone who sees it. So, I wonder, what kind of effect do you want to have on other people? What kinds of responses and changes within them do you think might occur when they see the expression on your face?

I’ve said before that we can’t not influence the world we live in. We change it moment by moment by our breath, by our movement, by our actions and behaviours, whether we choose them consciously or not. But here’s another way we influence the world we live in – through our facial expressions.

Of course we can’t go about our lives consciously fashioning particular facial expressions all the time, but when we spend part of each day generating feelings of love, kindness, gratitude and wonder, then that will all play out in our faces, and we will literally radiate those vibes.

In contrast, when we spend a lot of our day in fear and anger then……guess what? That reminds me of the old story about the hungry wolves inside us.