AWSDA’s Blog

Some believe that if there is a meaning in life, there must also be meaning in suffering, sorrow, pain, grief, and fatigue are also a part of life.  Our tendency may be to push our pains away, to sublimate or ignore them, and to let our sorrows drown.  The problem is that our sorrows are excellent swimmers and they will continue to resurface unless we acknowledge and deal with them.

"Where the is sorrow, there is holy ground," as Oscar Wilde once said.

Looked at more deeply, however, there is actually no suffering to be had.

In the book The Joy of Burnout by Dina Glouberman,

When you see hopeless, give up hope.
When you are humiliated, let go of pride and choose humility.
When you are disillusioned, de-illusion.
When you are holding on to what to you know, let go and surrender to what is about to become.

In fact, there is nothing to hold on to, nothing to resist or control– and nothing we really cam control.

Trying to run your life in a rigid and inflexible way will inevitably lead to fatigue because we are putting our energy into an ultimately futile pursuit.

Pseudo warriors look for control of persons, places, and things.  True warriors strive for balance, so that they are one with "things" rather than opposing those "things."

Remember what is important:  Who we really are, how the world really works, and our true purpose in life, instead of battling to maintain who we think we are and how our lives "should" be.

There is a story that Chuang Tzu and his friend were walking by a riverbank.  "The fish are really enjoying themselves in the water!" said Chuang Tzu.  "You are not a fish," his friend said.  "How do you know they are enjoying themselves?"  "Ah, but you are not me," said Chuang Tzu.  "How do you know I don’t know the fish are enjoying themselves?!"

The friend is caught in the tricks of the mind, which thinks it has an answer to everything.  The truth, however, is that not much can really be known because there is always another perspective on everything.

There are some who use this "trick of the mind," to confuse those to their way of thinking.

What is it that keeps us tied to the emotional hurts or habits of the past when, physically, there is nothing wrong with us?  The answer is that, there is something within us that endures and carries those "thoughts" forward.  That "something" is the ego.

The ego keeps us attached to long-gone pains, holding us in prisons of the past through our agreement to listen to its continuous chatter of guilt, shame, and blame.  It is a drain on our power, the voice of our self-importance.

The Bodhisattva is like the mightiest of warros, but his enemies are not common foes of flesh and bone.  His fight is with the inner delusions… He is the real hero, calmly facing any hardship in order to bring peace, happiness, and liberation to the world.