Learning faith from a dice game
I used to spend hours on end fantasizing about the outcomes of my efforts. I’d conjure vivid images of myself on a book tour, or with a baby, or even both at the same time—standing before an eager audience, reading aloud from the book while also nursing the baby under my shirt.
But I don’t want those things anymore. After 11 years of trying to get published—after 2 full years of trying and failing and agonizing to conceive a child—I thank my lucky stars that none of it ever worked out. I get to live a much quieter life this way. I get to be content with exactly what I have. I get to focus all my energy on nurturing my own mind.
So I’m done feeding my obsessions about the future.
These days when I put forth an effort, I usually imagine a pair of dice.
To me, that’s the perfect symbol of faith. Here’s why:
The only time I partake in gambling is once a year on Chinese New Year, with my partner and parents and a $15 buy-in. This past February, we gathered our handfuls of single bills to play five rounds of Left Center Right, a fast-paced game that involves tossing three dice. Through chance alone, the bills gradually make their way into a communal pot and eventually, the winner gets to claim it all.
It’s common for players to cheer for the dice to land in their favor. But I’d meditated deeply right before the celebration. I was cool and calm at the heart. So every time I threw the dice, I said only the silent prayer, “Please, may I awaken.”
I won the first round and thought nothing of it.
Still I prayed at every turn, “May I awaken.”
I won the second round. Then the third. “AGAIN?!” my family roared.
What a funny coincidence, I thought.
Then I won the fourth, and my mother checked my sleeves for tricks. Still I prayed, “May I awaken. May my loved ones awaken. May we all awaken.”
And the more I let go—the more I focused only on my own mind—the better results I got.
I won all five rounds that night—the chances of which are less than 0.1%.
I shuffled the cash into a neat stack. “Do you all want your money back?”
I didn’t need the trophy.
I already learned so much about faith—and that lesson was priceless.
“I don’t rely on the Buddha’s claim that faith ends in freedom from death.
I have realized this with wisdom. I have no doubts.”
—Sariputta, one of the Buddha’s chief disciples, paraphrased from Samyutta Nikaya 48.44