“Everything changes, nothing remains without change.”
~ Buddha
The sky today was such a perfect example of Buddha’s quote. The weatherman say it’s supposed to be mostly sunny, although you wouldn’t have guessed it upon first greeting the morning skies. Good news for Adult Parade down at Carnival 🙂 In each blink of the eye and flash of my camera, the clouds had changed.
Yesterday, I was talking with a friend about relationships. Isn’t it within our relationships with people that we can experience some of the biggest highs and lows in life. She and I concur the suffering we sometimes experience in our relationships is a result of our not recognizing that the relationship has evolved. Not deeply recognizing and honoring where the other person is in THIS moment of time. Not in our moment of time, or our mutual historical time together. People change!
Buddha’s Four Noble Truths:
1. Life contains Suffering.
2. We suffer because we cling and are attached, not wishing things to change.
3. The cessation of suffering is attainable.
4. The Noble Eightfold Path provides this understanding, through ethical conduct, mental development, and the cultivation of wisdom.
Stephen Batchelor writes: “The Four Noble Truths are pragmatic rather than dogmatic. They suggest a course of action to be followed rather than a set of dogmas to be believed. The four truths are prescriptions for behavior rather than descriptions of reality. The Buddha compares himself to a doctor who offers a course of therapeutic treatment to heal one’s ills. To embark on such a therapy is not designed to bring one any closer to ‘the Truth’ but to enable one’s life to flourish here and now.”
I think it’s why I’ve been so drawn to the study of the Buddha’s philosophy. When asked if there is a God, Buddha simply states something to the effect of “Just because I don’t discuss something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. But this understanding is not the goal. The goal is to be present and happy in the here and now.”
Sometimes people use the idea of detachment to detach from others or from involving themselves fully in life.
But the point of detachment isn’t so that we can become detached. It’s precisely the opposite: so that we can become deeply involved. Does this sound contradictory? It’s a paradox that’s resolved once we really understand what’s meant by “detachment.”
In Stillness Speaks, Eckhart Tolle brings out the meaning clearly:
Surrender becomes so much easier when you realize the fleeting nature of all experiences and that the world cannot give you anything of lasting value. You then continue to meet people, to be involved in experiences and activities, but without the wants and fears of the egoic self. That is to say, you no longer demand that a situation, person, place, or event should satisfy you or make you happy. Its passing and imperfect nature is allowed to be.
Detachment—not being anxious about your life and how things turn out—isn’t a matter of refusing to be deeply connected, deeply involved. It’s a matter of allowing life to be as it is, without putting up resistance to what’s happening.
Eckhart explains further: And the miracle is that when you are no longer placing an impossible demand on it, every situation, person, place, or event becomes not only satisfying but also more harmonious, more peaceful.
So it isn’t a matter of going through life in a “hands off” mode, uninvolved, distant. It’s a matter of giving up our need to control, impose, and force.
Think about it today. As you wish things to be different then they are. Let go. And watch yourself and the situation become less stressful in the blink of an eye ♥
