"A long and often difficult process of personal change and development"
A journey has a beginning and an end with lots of peaks & troughs of emotion along the way. There may be mountains to climb or deep gorges to navigate. There are diversions & obstacles. The road may be straight or winding, wide with plenty of space for maneuver or narrow & confining.
You get the picture? You see where I'm going with this?
When you get to my age you do think a lot about life & death. About what is important & what isn't. About the point of it all. About what you really want to do with the rest of your life & how you wasted some of it. About how much of it there will be. About who you want to spend precious time with - Who radiates & makes life good, who drains & makes life negative.
We squander life when we are young - We can't conceive that it will end. As we grow we take on responsibilities & we change little by little. We learn through experience, some good, some bad, some really dreadful.
Life is the most exciting journey. We never know what will happen & how well we will deal with it. We also never know when & how it will end. It truly is the biggest lottery ever.
Buddhism teaches that "existance is suffering" / Suffering is caused by craving & attachment / Nirvana is the cessation of suffering - The path to Nirvana is the Eightfold Path which is - right views, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
So it's really easy - follow the path & Nirvana is yours. How to navigate the journey of life itself. I have the intelligence to understand the teaching & the will to put it into practice. However it somehow isn't that simple. Life intervenes in all sorts of ways.
The thing is, will I feel the journey has been worth it at the end? Will I feel I behaved reasonably well? Have I made a positive contribution to other people, to the planet & to my own journey? Will I see Nirvana, (I suspect not).
I haven't got a clue. How can you possibly evaluate yourself impartially?
No comments:
Post a Comment