Craig Boyko writing in the Journey Prize 18, for 2006, was quoted in a recent Globe and Mail Book section with something worthy of repeating:
The fact that you're born to die makes patience impossible, desire unquenchable, joy fleeting, creeping boredom the only status quo. Because you must die, you must hurry, must fight tooth and nail, must forever ask yourself, "What now?" "What next?" as if to demonstrate there's not a moment's pause until the story screeches to an abrupt end, leaving the readers out on the pavement and blinking hard against the daylight.
The quote reflects my own struggle with the passions of needing to work v the universe's clear message to me recently that work is not arriving at the present moment, so...relax, be at ease. Even with that message echoing, I cannot seem to just BE; I need to act or do just for the sake of doing - I am not good at keeping busy without a goal. I need to see down the road to an outcome, a result, and that result has to be meaningful - in a BIG sense, to more than me. More than - "make a meal" or "get the clothes laundered". I guess I am not a "Chop Wood, Carry Water" only girl. I need a result, not having a result makes me restless, being restless makes me re-active, re-activity that is pointless which just feeds the beastliness in me. And I don't like that about me at all. Hmmm. So I guess I want to become a Chop Wood Carry Water girl by surrendering - and recognize this struggle as just another thing to get over about myself.
Ken Wilber - a guru of enlightenment - writes "What one can be, one must be." By becoming what a person wants to become, in the process, they change the world.
I know that this past absent time away from work, I "worked" at other things. Perhaps these were distractions; distractions become pre-occupations and occupations become work, when the avocation moves the soul and the economics fill the pocketbook. So perhaps I've begun moving in my proper direction, true to the compass.
Buddha taught that
Suffering is impermanent, impermanence is emptiness and
emptiness is selflessness.And this could also be stated as...
Impermanence is suffering, suffering is emptiness and
emptiness is selflessness.The root of suffering arose from
three poisons:
- passion,
- aggression and
- ignorance.
From Shambhala Sun, May 2006, What the Buddha Taught
Coming to awaken to this awareness a little more each day, I am like a small boat - alone on green water, floating. I am the boat, the water, the fish, the wind, until finally, I am the designer of the boat before it was built... and then I am the sparkle on the water where the boat will be.
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One more Meditation. From a note in the Globe and Mail.
An Inuit word was called to mind recently by a member of a expedition rounding Ellemere Island, on a kind of personal exploration. The writer of the article participated in one of those adventure holidays for folks who are looking for exotic locales. After experiencing the extended summer days without end, the writer and his companions inexplicably fell on their backs and joyfully played like children, gazing at clouds, giggling and glorying in the day. Upon reflection the writer believed this was nuannaarpoq - "the extravagant pleasure of being alive", described by Barry Lopez in his book Pulitzer Prize winning book Arctic Dreams nearly 20 years ago.
Oh to have a single word to capture such a sustaining thrill of the soul.
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