There's a Japanese word for it that L shared at table practice last evening. I don't remember the word she used. But in Brooklyn its translation is "Waddya going to do? {shrug} Forget about it!" The sense that life isn't fair, accompanied by a kindly acceptence of that reality and those experiencing it.
One of the reasons that we suffer during the most challenging times of our life, is that we assume that it is our job to transform life. We build a house, we plant a tree, we create a garden, we write a book, etc . . . We leave the world around us different from the way we found it. What we don’t often acknowledge is that Life’s job is to transform us in the process. As Hubert Benoit, the Zen teacher and French psychotherapist states, “The only task incumbent upon us is to understand reality and let ourselves be transformed by it.” This may not be the only task – but it is the one we forget or ignore as we become caught in efforts to plan and transform the objects, events and people around us.
Inherent in this question of “who’s doing the transforming?” is the tension between acceptance and control. Japanese psychiatrist, Shoma Morita, asserted that our inner world – our thoughts, feelings and body sensations – are fundamentally uncontrollable by our will. For example, we do not will ourselves to fall in love, or out of love, with a particular individual.
But the list of things which are beyond our control is monumental, starting with other people’s behavior and ending with illness and death. So it is understandable that the more we try to control life – get it to unfold according to our plans and desires – the more we are likely to create a living hell for ourselves — one composed of anxiety, fear, depression, resentment and anger. All of which are the byproduct of Life failing to give us what we want.
(--from blog Thirty Thousand Days, THE ESSENCE OF LIFE, by Gregg Krech) https://www.thirtythousanddays.org/2016/07/the-essence-of-life/
The grosbeak, after long stun on wood deck, flew off. When I left hospice patients the other night the ride home was in a deeper silence.
Krechi begins his piece with Pema Chodron:
“The essence of life is that it’s challenging. Sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes it is bitter. Sometimes your body tenses, and sometimes it relaxes and 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.” – Pema Chodron
In the monks' morning chant, the antiphon: "In the shadow of your wings I rejoice, alleluia!"
