|
Assortment
of Colorful Flowers - © Sachin Patke, Photographer
Look at
the way we "live" our lives. Ours is a heavy drama.
We grasp
for what we don't have, like the "perfect" relationship or the
"best" job.
We resist
what we do have, like our daily challenges to accept life as it
comes.
We aren't
even happy when we get what we want,
because we
are human beings living in a world of form and time,
and thus
everything ultimately changes.
If we
cling to anything, this attachment to the status quo
will
ultimately create for us an experience of suffering.
The
purpose of the game is really to be free; not avoiding or seeking,
but using
everything that comes to us in our world of physical
form
as
our curriculum to achieve liberation.
This is
playing the game as impeccably as we can,
and yet
not being attached to the results of what we do.
It's
called "being in the world, and not of the world",
because a
part of us knows it's not real, even though another part pretends it
is.
We have a
choice to flip our lens of perception and
view our
everyday experiences of life as all being "grist for the mill"
on our
journey of awakening.
Rather
than cataloging and labeling our experiences as good or bad,
depression
or elation -- we can view everything as input into our computer of
experience: The more input we receive, the more skillfully we can
respond to future situations.
Martin E. Segal
Excerpted
from
Buddha Is Always Smiling
| 
