A similar thought to others this week. We are always gently working on the heart’s capacity to accept life as it actually is
When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept
and he said if he were God
he would have made the world just so and no different.
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Necessary advice for life in Ireland, but in a more general sense it is a way of working with the mind. Once we fix on one desired result, inevitably the alternative seems a disappointment. Appreciation is a peaceful state of mind.
For after all, the best thing one can do
when it is raining
is to let it rain.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 – 1882, American Poet
Often, intimacy arises not from any attempt to take the pain away, but from living through together; not from a working out, but from a being with. Trust and closeness deepen from holding and being with, both emotionally and physically. I’m learning, pain by pain and tension by tension, that after all my strategies, the strength of love lies in receiving and not negotiating; in accepting each other and not problem solving each other; in listening and affirming each other, not trying to change or fix those we love.
Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
Because we are so imbued with this notion that happiness is something to be pursued by the continual transformation of the external, it can sound odd to hear the Buddha talk of uncovering happiness within. He acknowledged the inevitable presence of disequilibrium, which he called dukkha or suffering, but suggested we seek out its internal causes, understand them and solve the problem by means of internal adjustments. According to his analysis, it is not the objective discrepancy between the internal and the external condition that is the source of unhappiness; it is the desire for the external to change (or not to change as the case may be) which is itself an internal state.
Andrew Olwendzki, Unlimiting Mind
The best way to conduct oneself may be observed in the behaviour of water
Tao Te Chng VIII, 20
Mindfulbalance 