Tag: Mindfulness

Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books every day.

The person that puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.

Seneca,  Moral Letters, 101, 7b – 8a

The end of another year in the Christian cycle. Advent starts tomorrow and we begin to look forward. Cycles in nature and in our lives.

Seeing beginnings and endings – the arising and passing away of all conditioned forms – is a vital step in developing the understanding that nothing exists apart from interdependent, cause-and-effect relationships. To see the beginnings and endings is also, in my experience, a great support in difficult times. 

Early on, as I began to trust in the fiber of my being that nothing lasts, I became less afraid of pain. The fact that everything has an end comforted me. “One way or another,” I would say to myself, “this too will pass.” I was glad I saw that. I didn’t think much, in those initial moments of insight, about how the pleasant things change as well as the difficult ones. I know that when I struggle with the pain of any loss, the struggle preoccupies my mind and leaves no room for hope. When I recognize the pain I feel as the legitimate result of loss, I am respectful of its presence and kind to myself. My mind always relaxes when it is kind, and around the edges of the truth of whatever has ended, I see displays of what might be beginning.

Sylvia Boorstein, How Endings Make Room for Beginnings