Tag: buddhism

Life in Japan | Begin Where You Are

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Mito, Ibaraki, Japan. Weather: Rainy.

I’m sitting in one of the many cafés I consider a second home, watching passersby struggling with or embracing the rain. It’s Sunday morning and early enough that the late night clubgoers are still heading home. I am in awe of the high schoolers heading off to club activities and the salarymen who are likely heading to work some more. An obaachan holds on to her umbrella for dear life, her hands look gnarled yet strong and her bent back has seen its fair share of field labour of potato and rice harvesting, I imagine. That’s right, I am imagining, imagining the lives of the many people who happen by and who will likely remain unaware of my observation. What about my own life?

Recently, I have taken another step, shifting away from simply observing to taking action. A life lived in limbo is a life left on pause. I decided it was time to press my play button and see what happens. It’s a wild yet freeing feeling. I am learning to make peace with who I am and where I am in my life. Beginning where I am as who I am…what a crazy notion, at least for me. And it all began with a simple question: who would I have been if [insert whatever traumatic experience] didn’t happen?

Upon waking, I thank the universe that I have another opportunity to continue on this interesting journey called life. I am grateful for my breathing because I know that I am here. I make my bed with pleasure. I stretch for a moment and then clean my apartment…and then stretch some more. My body still feels heavy because of old experiences and thought patterns. However, I am feeling lighter in my heart and body as each day passes. I make a simple breakfast and lunch–I am practicing letting go of greed. I am letting go of suffering.

Photo by Nandhu Kumar on Pexels.com

Actions taken without worry, without the nagging inner critic or concern for the outer critics. This is the type of life that I am creating…and it is empowering. I am learning how to listen to feedback, whether from self or others, nonjudgmentally, taking from it what I find necessary for self-improvement and letting go of the rest. Freeing myself from the suffering of shame, the feeling of being inherently wrong as a human being, is my work now. I have discovered that my mind left without self-compassion is a dark and seemingly unruly place. I have also discovered that I am not my mind, nor am I my body. I am who I am.

Understanding that I am and am not has been crucial to pressing the play button on my life. I can observe the parts of myself, my mind and my body, with curiosity and then with intention. How shall I shape my mind to think? How shall I shape my body to move? My mind is my canvas, and I am the painter. My body is my clay, and I am the sculptor. In this way, I am choosing to move forward with my life.

Recently, a friend shared with me her knowledge of kintsugi (金継ぎ) or kintsukuroi (金繕い), the Japanese art of mending broken pottery using gold, silver, or platinum. She said to me that she thought that it was a lovely metaphor for when we are feeling broken in our lives and trying to mend ourselves. That is, that we can choose how we mend those places in which we have experienced hurt, to make those places and our overall sense more beautiful and stronger in the process.

So, in letting go of suffering, taking action in our lives through acknowledging ourselves, not just as mind and body, we can begin where we are on our journey and heal those places in which we have experienced hurt. We can begin creating new paths to an authentic self.

Have a beautiful day today and every day.

D.

What’s the Point of Being a Writer?

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Suffering.  In Buddhism, one of the teachings is that of “life is suffering.”  No, it doesn’t mean that all life aspects of life leads to suffering.  Instead, the suffering we experience is due to the impermanence of life itself, i.e. all things change with time.   It is the same with writing.  As you grow as a writer, your writing changes, morphs in ways that you may least expect.

Perhaps your favourite authors are among those acknowledged as prize worthy.  You spend hours pouring over every sentence in every book they have ever written, hoping to emulate them…but then realising that you fall severely short of the mark.  Your writing simply will not conform to your expectation.  Equally disturbing is understanding that your destiny is not to be the next Toni Morrison or Charles Dickens.

Still, you continue to write because you cannot help yourself but to write.  Your writing reflects your suffering.  It changes as you encounter life, find success, make mistakes, discover love, and regret loss.  Like death, writing looms over your life, defining it.  Regardless of whether you choose to embrace yourself as a writer or hide from it, writing is an inevitable part of you.

What’s the point of being a writer? You might as well ask What’s the point of living?  There is no point.  Writing is an end in itself.  Writers write.  Like breathing, there is no choice about it.

———-

I write because / I suffer because / I write because I suffer/ I suffer because I write

 

 

 

Acknowledge the Right Of Your Life Challenge: Pre-Challenge Inspiration from TinyBuddha.com

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Words of wisdom from by Vishnu TinyBuddha.com on learning to love yourself.

Who to Fall in Love with First: 6 Ways to Love Yourself

Below is an excerpt from the article.

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“Your task is not to seek for Love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~Rumi

We’re so busy waiting for someone to love us that we’ve forgotten about the one person we need to love first—ourselves.

Ironically, it was when my ten-year marriage fizzled that I began the innermost process of self-discovery about love.

While discouraged and saddened at the crumbling of our relationship, I began to explore love more. How had it fizzled? Why had we stopped loving each other, and what had happened to our love?

 

All of these…controlled by me

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ImageI’ve decided to return to actively practicing a lovingkindness meditation as I recognize that I had allowed feelings of fear, anger, and sadness to overwhelm me and veer me away from my path.

I allowed these feelings to rack my body with pain, my heart with dis-ease, my mind with worry, and my soul with turmoil.

It is truly hard to move forward while walking backwards.

If we keep our view always to that which is behind us, or always to that which we have around us, or always to that which we have ahead of us…I am not sure that we can truly be able to live mindfully or peaceable.

Instead I believe that mindfulness and peaceability comes from reminding ourselves of the following:

We may look behind to remind ourselves of the lessons we have learned. We may look around us to understand where those lessons have brought us. We may look ahead to understand what lessons we must choose to learn to arrive where we choose to be.

In essence, there is no need to despair neither our past, our present, or our future if we each remember that…

Who or what I am.
Who or what I will be.
Who or what I was recently.
All of these…controlled by me.

-db

“The Buddha said…”

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“The Buddha said that we are never separated from enlightenment. Even at the times we feel most stuck, we are never alienated from the awakened state. This is a revolutionary assertion. Even ordinary people like us with hang-ups and confusion have this mind of enlightenment called bodhichitta. The openness and warmth of bodhichitta is in fact our true nature and condition. Even when our neurosis feels far more basic than our wisdom, even when we’re feeling most confused and hopeless, bodhichitta—like the open sky—is always here, undiminished by the clouds that temporarily cover it.” – Pema Chödrön, from The Pocket Pema Chödrön

This quote by Pema Chödrön resonated with me today and I hope it will do the same for you.

Also, I wanted to share with you links to the two books that are most dear to me and they are both by Pema Chödrön:  When Things Fall Apart and The Places That Scare You. Both of these books remind me of my place in the universe and how to take each step forward even when my path is seemingly covered by impenetrable darkness.

There are, have been, and will be moments in our lives when it seems that nothing is going as we had hoped, when we feel our hands are bound by some unknown and unseen force, when we despair of our existence and our present feels profoundly heavier than both our past and imagined future.  Even in these moments, we must maintain our faith in the concept of limitless possibilities and probabilities, in our ability to shift our thinking and thereby shift our emotional space.

In essence, we can change our reality…one step at a time.  After all, no matter the duration of our winter, there will always be a spring.

So, let’s keep our chins up and eyes forward while trusting in our abilities to make it through every single day until we arrive to the places, in which we aspire to be.

Until Next Time,

Diedré

The In-Between State

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Every now and again, I pick up Pema Chodron‘s book, The Places that Scare You, and read a chapter or two.  Today, I turned to chapter twenty-two “The In-Between State,” which seems to aptly describe my present state of being.  She writes that “[a]nxiety, heartbreak, and tenderness mark the in-between state.  It’s the kind of place we usually want to avoid.”

Found via Google Images

Found via Google Images

She also explains that, in this state, one has already begun to reject those things, in which one once found pleasure.  That is, in this in-between state, one begins to understand that the suffering that is being experienced is far greater than any pleasurable acts that one might have relied upon in the past to quell one’s fears.

Thus, what can one do in confronting such a state of being?  Chrodon states that the answer lies in being able to stay in the middle.  Specifically, she writes, “By not knowing, not hoping to know, and not acting like we know what’s happening, we begin to access our inner strength.”

The task, then, is to hold oneself in abeyance, even if the world seems to be demanding that a decision be made, or a step be taken.  It is in standing still that allows one the opportunity to hear, with clarity, the inherent wisdom within.  It is a wisdom that understands that there need not be judgements of good or bad, right or wrong, etc.

So, how am I handling my in-between state?  Well, I am silently facing my many internal selves, and that are asking me to choose a direction–I am learning to sit with their uncertainties, their fears…my uncertainties, my fears… Until next time,D.

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He tells me to “let it go…”

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Today, I was told “just let it go” a few times in a conversation. The “let it go” was in reference to an object.  I found it a curious comment, since I rarely hold on to possessions and, with ease, give them away.

I found it curious that this person did not realize that the “thing” to which I was holding, if I were holding anything at all, was actually something intangible, something far more precious and valuable than any object.  That is, friendship.

Friendship, whether young or old, is far more important in our lives than any item that can be purchased.  It is through the connections that we build with others that we truly learn about ourselves and the process of living.  Sometimes the connections that we form are unhealthy for us, damaging, and can darken our perception of ourselves and the world around us.  Other times, our connections can pull us out of the temporary abyss in which we sometimes find ourselves.

As time accumulates with each passing moment, I have come to understand that there is nothing truly to which we can hold, except ourselves.

Self Embrace

Found: http://www.flickr.com/photos/whiskeyglass

This connection that we have with ourselves is one to be nurtured and acts as a guide through even the most difficult of moments.Thus, even as we make or lose connection with others, we never let go of ourselves.

To my young friend, who advised me to “let it go,” I say there is no “it” of which one must let go.  Rather, one must simply let go…of every “thing” that one has ever desired to possess.

For many years, I have maintained an “open embrace,” allowing others to come into and go out of my life as they choose.  It is the way in which I prefer to live, i.e. neither feeling the need to hold on nor having the necessity to let go of…

"Black Health Is..." Found: http://cdn.madamenoire.com

“Black Health Is…” Found: http://cdn.madamenoire.com

Until Next Time,

D.

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