January 2010     
           Reflection                        
   
Happy New Year and Happy New Decade

“We think that if we just meditated enough, or jogged enough, or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect. But from the point of view of someone who is awake, that’s death. Seeking security or perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed and whole, self-contained and comfortable, is some kind of death. It doesn’t have fresh air. There is no room for something to come in and interrupt all that. We are killing the moment by controlling our experience. Doing this is setting ourselves up for failure, because sooner or later, we are going to have an experience we can’t control; our house is going to burn down, someone we love is going to die, we are going to find out we have cancer, a brick is going to fall out of the sky and hit us on the head….

The essence of life is that it is challenging. Sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes it is bitter. Sometimes your body tenses, and sometimes it relaxes or opens. Sometimes you have a headache, and sometimes you feel 100% healthy. From an awakened perspective, trying to tie up all the loose ends and finally get it together is death, because it involves rejecting a lot of your basic experience. There is something aggressive about that approach to life, trying to flatten out all the rough spots and imperfections into a nice, smooth ride.

To be fully alive, fully human and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. From the awakened point of view, that’s life.”

––Excerpt from “When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chodron. Pgs. 71-72

Practices: