Our fixed ideas often lead to the painful reactions in the mind. We do all sorts of acts based on selfishness. To follow our selfishness is NOT the path to HOW TO JUST LIVE. When we act selfishly we often are conniving to get, to have and to keep something or someone we believe will…………………………YOU fill in the blank. Even when we appear to get, have something or someone, it does not LAST!
Sobering, isn’t it.
Time takes care of life and keeps us sober.
Everything & everyone changes.
Results of Disappointment
Don’t Worry. Really. You Can Learn to JUST LIVE.
Each one of us suffers from fixed ideas in the mind.
Consider expectation & disappointment - do you expect something from life and from others - have you finally understood that expectation leads to disappointment of life and disappointment in others.
All of life consists of sensitive beings.
We all have experienced the sensitivity of nature. Chipmunks rear up on hind legs to survey the landscape for food and danger. Is it safe to forage for food & water right here, right now. Chipmonks, like all life, are sensitive to the need for nourishment and safety. Most of nature just lives and acts from a sense of survival.
All of life is one-shared-unity of just living and surviving.
But do we humans continuously repeat wishes, hopes and expectations for life to be different - for life to fulfill us. Do we have hope that just one more time someone or somethng will meet our expectation and NOT disappoint us?
We visit and revisit the same hope again and again thinking and believing this time “I” will get satisifaction - lasting satisfaction. Hope is a wish and it is a wish we need to drop.
Abandon hope. BUT…you say?
Yes, we are attached to our wishes and hopes and expectations. We don’t want to let them go. We think and believe that wishing and hoping and expecting is part of life like gamblers with a slot machine. We want to strike it rich according to our endless selfish desires.
BUT…wishes, hopes and expectations are what cause our suffering. It is a roller coaster of disappointment and sorrow.
We get caught in the suffering of a fixed idea - even though we couch the idea in a wish, a hope or an expectation.
There are two sides to this suffering. One side leads to anxiety and all sorts of irritation rooted in unfulfilled desire and the other side leads to dissappointment which comes with an assortment of harm.
YOU need to see how YOU put your hand into these three fires. Are you hoping for life to be your way, according to what you want and desire? Do you wish and expect that you can control life?
The Path of Offering
This is when I offer an ancient story that if YOU take it to heart, you will begin to reduce your dependence on hopes, wishes and expectations.
It requires nothing in it for me!
But…you must be willing, able and determined to practice. Just reading this is not practice!
Daily practice of accepting what comes into your life as your life helps to diminish your wishes, hopes and expectations.
Study yourself with the ancient story below.
You are the only one who gets to decide to study, practice and just live.
It is up to YOU.
The Story
INTRODUCTION of TWO Characters.
Shitou was an ancient Buddhist master. He is known for writing two well-used sutras, The Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage & Merging of Difference & Unity.
Layman Pang was an ancient mendicant lay monk who rid himself of material objects and spent his life learning, practicing and wandering as a begging monk with his family.
Layman Pang dropped all his wishes, hopes and expectations from the world and gained “supernatural power.” To draw water & carry firewood was then a marvelous activity.
He knew how to just live in harmony with daily life, grasping nothing and discarding nothing.
Can YOU do the same? It requires commitment and attention to whatever work shows up. Full attention! All acceptance.
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