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We begin again
Slowly this time Look gently inward Relax body Calm mind Open heart Listen deeply Heal into life What do we do with suffering? As far as I can see, we have two choices—we either transform our suffering into something else, or we hold on to it, and eventually pass it on.
In order to transform our pain, we must acknowledge that all people suffer. By understanding that suffering is the universal unifying force, we can see people more compassionately, and this goes some way toward helping us forgive the world and ourselves. By acting compassionately we reduce the world’s net suffering, and defiantly rehabilitate the world. It is an alchemical act that transforms pain into beauty. This is good. This is beautiful... The utility of suffering, then, is the opportunity it affords us to become better human beings. It is the engine of our redemption. - Nick Cave Is there to be found on earth a fullness of joy, or is there no such thing? Is there some way to make life fully worth living, or is this impossible? If there is such a way, how does one go about finding it? What should one try to do? What should one seek to avoid? What should be the goal in which one's activity comes to rest? What should one love? What should one hate?
What the world seems to value is money, reputation, long life, achievement. What it seems to count as joy is health and comfort of body, good food, fine clothes, beautiful things to look at, pleasant music to listen to. What it seems to condemn is lack of money, a low social rank, a reputation for being no good, and an early death. If people find that they are deprived of what the world seems to value, they panic or fall into despair. Sometimes it seems they are so concerned for their life that their anxiety makes life unbearable, even when they have the things they think they want. Their very concern for enjoyment makes them unhappy, and they seem to drive themselves in order to get more and more which they cannot really use. They appear alienated from themselves, and exhaust themselves in their own service as though they were slaves of others. I cannot tell if what the world considers "happiness" is happiness or not. All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it, I see them carried away headlong, grim and obsessed, in the general onrush of the human herd, unable to stop themselves or to change their direction. All the while they claim to be just on the point of attaining happiness. My opinion is contentment and well-being at once become possible the moment one ceases to act with them in view, and if you practice non-doing, you will have both happiness and well-being. Here is how I sum it up: Heaven does nothing, its non-doing is its serenity Earth does nothing, its non-doing is its rest From the union of these two non-doings All actions proceed All things are made How vast, how invisible This coming-to-be All things come from nowhere How vast, how invisible No way to explain it All beings in their perfection Are born of non-doing Hence it is said: "Heaven and Earth do nothing Yet there is nothing they can not do" Where is the person who can attain To this non-doing? - T. Merton, abridged and adapted Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thought nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.
- Anonymous Shoshone |
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February 2023
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