heh. dunno, that just seemed funny to me. and timely.
if you’ve read here a while, you know i’m buddhist. you likely also remember a time when i had a category ‘becoming buddhist’. eventually i realized that was silly because i have always been buddhist and so i rolled all of that writing/righting (heh) back into the category ‘life experiences’.
i really should not be quite so impulsive. i have since thought that was a foolish decision, as there are those who come just to read these types of entries and in consideration, i should have kept them easy to find.
i may go back and recreate the category and move them all back… but since there are so many that span both categories… meh, i dunno.
anyway. some months ago, i ‘took a break’ from all the heavy mental whipping i was giving myself. me mental bum was sore, k? and i’ve been noticing lately that the whole thing is kind of edging in again from the sidelines. so, of course, i turn and look square at it and say, ‘i see you creeping up again…’ and wait to see if we’re dancing or wrestling this time.
which is my way of saying i found a great quote today. heh. here, see for yourself:
Life would be unbearable if everything stayed the same because human beings find situations that are fixed and predictable very hard to tolerate. Even in small matters, we become uneasy if we feel there is no end in sight. I know of couples who live harmoniously together for ten years then marry and are divorced within a year. As soon as they feel bound to each other for the rest of their lives, they begin to fight. Impermanence removes our reasons for quarrelling with each other. Arguments only break out if we imagine that our relationships are endless. When we appreciate that our time with our families, partners, and friends may be shorter than we think, we get on better with each other. Awareness of impermanence gives us extraordinary inner strength and resilience.
–from Mind Training by Ringu Tulku
a very sage and insightful thing. it immediately called up examples in my own life, and those witnessed in the lives of others. the only time i ever argue with anyone is when my sense of wanting this or that has gotten in the way of caring for them. i find that happening a heck of a lot less lately, which i am very thankful of and humbled by… this stuff really does ‘work’ when it comes to gaining a truly encompassing sense of peace and equanimity with the world, with myself, with others, with the ‘all’ of it, and even with fears of death and such.
i sent a funny video involving spiders out the other day and my daughter wrote me back, amazed, because she could remember when i was so phobic of spiders that i could not even look at a picture of one without breaking into shudders. i had not realized until the moment i read her email just how far i’ve come with all of this. this is a very small example, but it is a very large example. hard to explain without dredging up darker days and experiences. suffice to say i was phobic of them and not only am i not now, i have recently helped several exit the area in which it was most likely they would be stomped by my parents or chomped by their dogs.
another change that seems huge lately is how often i feel like just curling up and crying for the world. i see such terrible things happening and the way people treat one another…. and i don’t get mad, or angry, or any of that anymore. i just have the pervasive feeling of heaviness and sadness and next thing i know, i’m bawling my eyes out because i wish it were possible that such things were impossible. but i feel a sense of understanding as to why they are not and the weight of that just seems to ingrain it the deeper. so… i generally give myself a certain amount of time each day to feel that weight and weep with it and breathe for it. the way i have it figured, i have to be feeling it for a reason, and maybe feeling it helps someone else not have to… which i would count a blessing.
oh, hah. and i found this piece as well… which hit me amusing initially, but that faded to a kind of sadness, too. my parents are convinced i’m going to hell for my beliefs. but they are not the sort to be passive-aggressive about it like some… you know that whole pious sad look thing? no, they do not do that. still, it’s there. and the one time they tried to have ‘this talk’ with me, it did not end well because they needed me to agree and i needed them to not need that. but this reminded me of it all…
A Christian Missionary once scolded a Buddhist Master, saying “Do you not realize that if you do not receive Jesus as your Savior, you will be condemned to an eternity of suffering in Hell?” The Buddhist Master calmly replied, in the spirit of the “Vow of the Bodhisattva”, “Most gladly will I enter into numberless hells, for countless eternities, until I have helped all the suffering beings in those Hells to achieve their own liberation.”
the layers of humor for me are multiple. the missionary thinking self-interest is and should be the biggest motivator…. the fact that this has been, in my experience, the presentation and last resort of all such attempts in my life by others, ‘how can you not care for yourself more than anything’? but I do realize even this humor is distinguishing… but sorry (not really, obviously)… for it is funny to me.
like i said, om having a buddhist moment. and whaddayakno? it isn’t painful. hah.