How many times have we been told that, or said it to ourselves? As if it was easy!!! What is meant by that bit of kind advice? Simple! Just open that hand that wants to hold onto something. So why is that so hard?
Well, I might let it go, but does it let me go? It might be, that, when we say 'let go', aversion is present, the unwillingness or inability to be present with what is. And then it comes back again and again … it is haunting me, maybe years after the event …. ah, because it is an ‘it’. We have created a thing, a fixed entity, and see it as somehow separate and independent from the flow of events. There is the problem! We are ignoring the Buddha's teaching of dependent origination - that every phenomena appears in dependence on other phenomena. So, we might look more closely when the flow of events became an ‘it’ … or better: how did that come about? Did I do that? Oh, now we have an it and a that! So many things to consider, and wonder about!
It has been said that we cannot think our way out of Samsara, and this is exactly what is meant. With the very best of intentions, we get ourselves caught. We try to create clarity by thinking about difficult and important issues, and don’t find a way out. We all know this state - so, are there alternatives? Can we live in a way that does not create the idea of fixed entities that weigh us down?
"Great sages like Milarepa and Padmasambhava said this, and it is true: when we hold on to what we have as some ‘thing’, we head for disaster because sooner or later we will lose every ‘something’ we have. But if we see that this something is also nothing, like a rainbow, then in the inseparability of appearance and emptiness we find freedom. Since there is nothing to grasp, then every day we can mindfully engage in less grasping. When people are sick and distressed we have concern; we are touched and moved. Then we meet their relatives who are upset so we sit with them and respond as required. All of this activity is just movement in space and time, changing appearances with nothing to hold on to, self- arising and self-liberating, this is the actual quality of our existence." James Low: Space is the greatest friend, 2017
Within this lies the secret to living more lightly – and it is not something ‘we’ can do. ‘We’, as we know ourselves to be, are what makes our experience heavy again and again. We do not need to negate the experience of ‘me’, but we can notice when the ‘me’ wants to be in the foreground, when it surrounds itself with worries, status, definite views – and so distinguishes itself from ‘other’. This splitting, separation is what can be noticed … and can be taken lightly. There is a release, a relief, which lies in our connectedness with the world, as it can be experienced, if ‘we’ step back a little. We can pay attention, and notice how we always arise within what is around us: other people & the living world. – And here is a quote from a book I love reading just now:
“The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. Exactly how they do this, we don’t yet know. But what we see is the power of unity. What happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer: Braiding Sweetgrass
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"(...) But if we see that this something is also nothing, like a rainbow, then in the inseparability of appearance and emptiness we find freedom."
Heute morgen um 09:10 Uhr starb unser geliebter Kater Sammy an einem Tumor. Nach extrem kurzer und schwerer Krankheit mussten wir ihn heute morgen von seinem Leid erlösen. Auch wenn mir Leerheit und Erscheinung klar ist, so ist in dem Frieden auch Trauer und Schmerz enthalten, die ihrerseits wiederum ebenfalls leer sind. Wer ist es, der tauert und den Schmerz erlebt? James schrieb mir gestern:" To love is to hurt and so Chenrazi cries and Tara is born from his tears."