Day 6
I love the little pleasures of life… Good food, good friends, good wine… As a matter of fact, last night, I went out with my closest friends to our usual hangout, a neighborhood restaurant that we love to go to. As usual, we laughed, drank and talked… As I was looking at them, I thought, maybe this is happiness. An accumulation of little sparks of joy… But what about the rest of the time? What about the times when we’re not together? What about the times when we are by ourselves with no entertainment, in silence, in solitude, faced with our deepest fears? Yesterday evening came to an end, as everything else eventually ends! Every worldly pleasure is impermanent. Buddhists believe that the ignorance of this impermanence is actually the cause of all suffering. We give so much value to the worldly pleasures that when we realize their impermanence, we are doomed to suffer. Our thirst to fulfill our desires puts us in a constant state of dissatisfaction, always wanting more.
Well… I love warm baths, melted chocolate with bananas, being with my kids, having dinner parties, laughing, singing, writing, painting, dancing, playing charades, teaching, discovering new places, meeting new people, going to museums, going to the movies, making crank calls (I haven’t done it since I was 16, but I used to love it), snooping into people’s lives through Facebook, listening to music, reading, love, passionate embraces… I don’t care that all these things are impermanent. For now I am fortunate enough to appreciate what life has to offer me. The problem is, the fear of impermanence can sometimes create anxiety. Because the fact the impermanence of all these little worldly pleasures is nothing compared to the impermanence of life itself! Accepting impermanence, embracing it, as being part of the cycle of life and working on giving life a meaning through some sort of spirituality, is what seems necessary to achieve lasting and profound happiness.
Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world, but accepting that they pass away.
Aitken Roshi
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