MaryBeth ingram
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I had to spend more time with the Four Reminders and found this very helpful, https://thebuddhistcentre.com/resources/dharma-teaching-four-reminders-vishvapani
A very small example – I have carried a pervasive sadness lately and have been unwilling to sit with it. I haven’t ignored it – can’t, it lives as I live, BUT I hadn’t allowed it to fully occupy my body. I suppose I feared what would happen if I did. Somehow I found the willingness to sit with it for two mornings, without story, just the sadness. I woke today and noticed that I had very little sadness present. Gratefulness was present. Sitting with it was the key.
I just listened to “If We Were Vampires” – we did get 40 years together, almost 41, and I’m the one spending days alone. Thankfully I have a full life – at the 7th anniversary of Terry’s death, I woke up with two questions fully present – how have I lived 7 years without him and how has my life blossomed in the past 7 years.
@Betsy – we share the concern of age. For me, and I know this is semantics, it’s less about ‘aging’ and more about living at this age. I still feel free, able, capable, curious, excited, and desirous of experiencing life. Above all that desire is the umbrella of knowing time is limited – how do I best use it, use my resources (feel grateful to have some), and benefit my community, my friends, my family. How do I handle guilt about enjoying this time instead of buckling down and doing ‘important work’ as so many do. There I go creating my own suffering – an invitation to breathe and come back to the NOW of my life.
Without a doubt, the large concern of my life is the knowing that I’m in what I call, “the sacred final chapter”. I have no idea how long this chapter is or will be, but at 72, there’s no avoiding that I’m ‘at the end’ – whether it be another 20 years, 2 years or 12. Unknown. I accept this and wish to embrace this chapter and believe I am actively doing that. I have no fear of dying – I’m just not ready to stop being in this physical realm, in this flow. The first 3 truths are my reality even before I could consciously say that was so … I have created lots of suffering in denying that I’m suffering. Is the 3rd truth, ‘cessation of suffering’, real? Perhaps a lessening of suffering through acceptance and less grasping and attachment but not sure complete cessation is possible. As to the 8-fold path – #7, Right Mindfulness is where I’m drawn. Keeping present, staying in the NOW. Every one of these 8 though resonates.
Thereza – much appreciate how you ‘locate’ your chosen lineage on either side of you. Usually it’s only a mental placement for me but I see how placing these chosen ones on my right and on my left could make them very present with me during meditation. Thank you!
I set up a meditation sacred space awhile ago (like several years!) but frankly, mostly what I do is walk by it. It’s got some wonderful, special mementos that remind me of my lineage. Lineage – and yet, till wondering what that is for me – yes, ancestors with all their complicated histories, but what isn’t lineage if I consider all that ever was a part of what is whether I directly have known it or not. I’ve never met 98% of my ancestors so why would I need to meet anyone or anything that’s been in existence to consider it lineage. Susan referred to ‘the essential me’ that here – was here, will be here, when my physical existence is gone. There’s a great read, Caesar’s Last Breath which unfolded so much for me about existence – the reality that every atom and molecule that makes me was here before they formed me and will return to their natural states after me – maybe to be made into someone, something new? Ah, so much. In any case, I’ve now sat at my sacred meditation space twice!
Hello from Westerville Ohio, just north of Columbus Ohio. I’m here to keep learning and deepening my practice and understanding of Buddhism. Cradle Christian, raised American Baptist (the liberal wing), then United Methodist, then ELCA, then Episcopalian and started attending a local Sangha a little over 2 years ago. Institutional religion has become false to me, the concept of God is no longer working – “God” is a ready linguistic placeholder. I do feel a life-force exists before birth and after death that I cannot explain but it seems that something bigger than me/us is in motion and we are invited into that flow if we choose. Even if we don’t, that flow still, well, flows. It isn’t a person, a being, but an insistence … I love how John Caputo defines “God” – not existing but insisting.
I have found Susan’s teaching very grounding and openhearted.