Sunday Quote: Not waiting for our life to start

river allondon

Life itself must be grasped in the midst of its flow

D.T. Suzuki

With our flaws

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We don’t have to hate ourselves for our own vulnerability. We don’t have to hate ourselves for what life has done to us.
We don’t have to hate ourselves because hurt or loss or longing has gotten to us. Our desires will always be with us in some form, keeping us firmly attached to a world that will hurt us.

We must come to love ourselves, love our life in its vulnerability, in its impermanence, not in spite of all its flaws, but because of them

Because the vulnerability, the changes, the flaws,  make us who we are.

 
Barry Magid, Ending the Pursuit of Happiness
photo: alan Murray-Rust

Part of life

Working with unpredictability

Trauma is not just the result of major disasters. It does not happen to only some people. An undercurrent of trauma runs through ordinary life, shot through as it is with the poignancy of impermanence. I like to say that if we are not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, we are suffering from pre-traumatic stress disorder. There is no way to be alive without being conscious of the potential for disaster. One way or another, death (and its cousins: old age, illness, accidents, separation and loss) hangs over all of us. Nobody is immune. Our world is unstable and unpredictable, and operates, to a great degree and despite incredible scientific advancement, outside our ability to control it.

Mark Epstein, The Trauma of Being Alive, New York Times, August 2013

Control

Image taken from rawforbeauty.com

A part of life

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Movement and change are interesting aspects of life to work with. On one level change is obvious – such as the rain last night in Ireland after a few days of lovely sun – and we frequently resist this, acting as if we expect things to always remain the same. On another level, we have an inner restlessness which is constantly moving us to want change, that things be different, “better”, a constant inner “becoming” that does not make contentment in the present moment easy. This quote deals with impermanence, but both aspects – impermanence and becoming – have to be worked with, if we are to become fully human.

Change of one sort or another is the essence of life, so there will always be the loneliness and insecurity that come with change. When we refuse to accept that loneliness and insecurity are part of life, when we refuse to accept that they are the price of change, we close the door on many possibilities for ourselves; our lives become lessened, we are less than fully human.

If we try to prevent, or ignore, the movement of life, we run the risk of falling into the inevitable depression that must accompany an impossible goal. Life evolves; change is constant. When we try to prevent the forward movement of life, we may succeed for a while but, inevitably there is an explosion; the groundswell of life’s constant movement, constant change, is too great to resist.

Jean Vanier, Becoming Human

photo xlibber

Simply being aware

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When you meditate, do not try to have good thoughts, do not try to keep away bad thoughts,

do not try to stop thoughts, and do not try to go after them.

Rather, rest in a state of being aware of the thoughts as they arise.

Kalu Rinpoche