📿 Misperceiving the End of the World (and Other Daily Practices)

My Toddler the Reincarnated Lama

I recently gathered new evidence to support the growing case that my daughter is a reincarnated Tibetan Buddhist lama. Shortly after we arrived in Scotland, she spotted a stuffed animal of a highland cow—an animal native to the region but completely unfamiliar to her—and immediately shouted a brand-new word: “YAK!”

Since “highland cow” is a bit of a mouthful for her, we’ve started calling them “yaks”—inaccurately, yes, but charmingly so. I like to think it's a nod to her previous lifetime in Tibet. She adores her stuffed yak, along with the oversized yak footstool in our Airbnb. We’ve even gotten into the habit of telling the yaks about our day before bed and giving them big hugs goodnight.

Which is why I was so excited to head to the Scottish highlands and show her that yaks are, in fact, real animals and not just stuffies.

On the train ride from Edinburgh, we sped past a field where a group of highland cows were grazing. “Ruby,” I said, “Do you know what those are?” She nodded. “What are they?” I asked, anticipating an enthusiastic “Yak!” Instead, she looked out the window and calmly replied, “Woof,” clearly mistaking them for dogs.

It reminded me of a Buddhist analogy I often return to in uncertain times: You’re walking through a field at night and come across a snake. You panic—it’s right in front of you, and it’s a snake! But then you shine a flashlight on it and realize it’s just a rope. It always was a rope. But in the dark, you misperceived it as a snake.

Similarly, Ruby misperceived, due to the speed of the train or the distance from the herd or the not-ever-seeing-one-in-person of it all, a highland cow for a dog.

And it got me thinking: I do the same thing. I misperceive things all the time. I read breaking news alerts that suggest the end of democracy as I’ve known it, and I brace myself. Underneath the heading it reads “Developing Story,” and each time I refresh the page, it feels slightly less triggering with every new update. Maybe it’s not the end of democracy as I’ve known it after all. The shock and awe to my nervous system isn’t worth it for most of these articles; I’ve gotten into the practice of not refreshing them at all.

This got me thinking about perception. What am I currently seeing, in my personal life or in the news, that I think is a snake but is actually a rope?

Or, to borrow Ruby’s vocabulary: what “yaks” am I expecting to woof at me? What situations do I enter already feeling a bit on edge, assuming I’ll be misunderstood or judged, when in reality…no one’s even barking?

In Buddhism we talk about absolute and relative truth. On an absolute level, there is no solid Lodro, or solid daughter or solid news article or anything; we are all changing all the time, coming together and falling apart in a continuous way. Another way to consider that is when we empty ourselves out of all of our fixed notions and ideas about who we are and the way the world works, we are in touch with our innate wisdom and can truly see things for what they are. That is an absolute perspective.

But also, I have to get The Laundry done. Emptiness is only one part of the story. I also have to acknowledge that emptiness, as the Buddha taught, arises as form. On a relative level there are deadlines and students to meet with and a daughter to care for…and the news of the day does have an impact on the world. So I try to remember the non-solidity of the toughest challenges and show up as compassionately as possible for whoever is in front of me.

As I mused to myself, we rode by a series of small ponds which I found quite lovely. To me, from the position of casual train rider, they were beautiful moments in a picturesque landscape. Likely to someone who lives nearby though, they are perceived as a bitch to get around when you’re traveling to see your neighbor. I imagine there are also many frogs who perceive those ponds as home. None of us are wrong in our perception. But we are only holding one point of view.

That made me wonder: what if I leaned further into conversations with people whose worldviews are radically different from mine? What if I stopped avoiding political topics with my Republican friends—not to argue or correct, but to listen with genuine curiosity? Would I be able to empty myself out of my fixed ideas long enough to see something new about them?

In the same way I became genuinely curious about the perspective of the local and the frogs in the pond, could I acknowledge that there are other ways of seeing this situation that in no way negate my own?

As we continued on the train ride we went through several dark tunnels. Each time, Ruby would become alarmed and exclaim, “Uh oh!” over and over again.

After a few rounds of this I turned to her and asked, “What happens when we go through tunnels?”