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Life is beautiful
misecmisc1
I am a HinduIndia Veteran
hi all,
just some thoughts came to me, so writing this thread.
life is beautiful - agreed it is having suffering in it, the physical suffering cannot be avoided, but the mental suffering can be avoided. much problem is because we want the things to go a certain way, which they will not because they are not under our control. even our body and our mind is not in our control, so how can anything else be in our control. so in a way, nothing is in our control - but this said, there is still the option of choosing right over wrong in every moment in our life.
we suffer, because we want something which we don't have - but we miss to acknowledge the fact that there are things which we do have. we have the six sense organs with us, which themselves are creating magic all the time - but since we consider these as routine things or obvious things (which an organ should do), we miss to see the magic behind it. the eyes see something (be it anything), we think what is the big deal in it as eyes are meant for seeing - but we miss to appreciate the magic which is creating the colours in our experience, so the act of seeing itself is an experience much bigger and much wonderful than we can think of - but we think that seeing Eiffel Tower or The Pyramids is a thing which is wonderful, so we miss the wonderfulness of seeing a flower of a wild plant, which grows just like that without much gardening effort from others.
for hearing, similarly we think going to hear a concert is something which can be considered wonderful, but we miss the magic of sound getting created in our experience in ordinary things like rain-drops falling on earth, wind blowing etc.
same type of things goes with other sense organs and their activities.
we consider the grosser things as valuable and subtle things as ordinary things. life offers everything to us in our every moment, but we confine ourselves in the small self(which we have created) and we miss to see the bigger self, the oneness of which we are a part.
if we just try to fully accept whatever is happening in the present moment, we may be able to appreciate life at its fullest - but usually what happens is we try to do something so that others see it and appreciate it and from their appreciation, our happiness comes - we try to gain something from outside to make us happy, missing the fact that since nothing is in our control, so depending on outside things for pleasure cannot make us happy permanently. agreed with this approach, we may not become somebody big in this material world, but anyways whatever we do and we achieve, in the end all material achievements has to go away from us. so why bother too much to achieve things - at the most what we want is to be alive - some food for maintaining the body, some shelter for protecting our body from weather, some water to drink etc. agreed when we have families, we have much more responsibilities, but still we can try to do our best and not be too bothered or get anxious with what shall happen in future with us or with our families - we can work as per our responsibility and since nothing is in our control, so we can also relax and not get too stressed in our lives. this is not to say that we should run away from our responsibilities, rather we should try to act morally correct in every situation we face, there by making this life itself has a spiritual path on which we travel.
the most wonderful thing, which we have is that we are alive.
i am a completely ignorant person with all defilements of lust, anger, greed, hatred, attachment and ego in my mind - so obviously i cannot say the above things, but the above things came to my mind based on my theoretical understanding of teachings of Zen monks. so just thought of sharing these thoughts with you all. if you find whatever is written above is rubbish, then i am sorry for your time getting wasted in reading this thread.
metta to all sentient beings.
just some thoughts came to me, so writing this thread.
life is beautiful - agreed it is having suffering in it, the physical suffering cannot be avoided, but the mental suffering can be avoided. much problem is because we want the things to go a certain way, which they will not because they are not under our control. even our body and our mind is not in our control, so how can anything else be in our control. so in a way, nothing is in our control - but this said, there is still the option of choosing right over wrong in every moment in our life.
we suffer, because we want something which we don't have - but we miss to acknowledge the fact that there are things which we do have. we have the six sense organs with us, which themselves are creating magic all the time - but since we consider these as routine things or obvious things (which an organ should do), we miss to see the magic behind it. the eyes see something (be it anything), we think what is the big deal in it as eyes are meant for seeing - but we miss to appreciate the magic which is creating the colours in our experience, so the act of seeing itself is an experience much bigger and much wonderful than we can think of - but we think that seeing Eiffel Tower or The Pyramids is a thing which is wonderful, so we miss the wonderfulness of seeing a flower of a wild plant, which grows just like that without much gardening effort from others.
for hearing, similarly we think going to hear a concert is something which can be considered wonderful, but we miss the magic of sound getting created in our experience in ordinary things like rain-drops falling on earth, wind blowing etc.
same type of things goes with other sense organs and their activities.
we consider the grosser things as valuable and subtle things as ordinary things. life offers everything to us in our every moment, but we confine ourselves in the small self(which we have created) and we miss to see the bigger self, the oneness of which we are a part.
if we just try to fully accept whatever is happening in the present moment, we may be able to appreciate life at its fullest - but usually what happens is we try to do something so that others see it and appreciate it and from their appreciation, our happiness comes - we try to gain something from outside to make us happy, missing the fact that since nothing is in our control, so depending on outside things for pleasure cannot make us happy permanently. agreed with this approach, we may not become somebody big in this material world, but anyways whatever we do and we achieve, in the end all material achievements has to go away from us. so why bother too much to achieve things - at the most what we want is to be alive - some food for maintaining the body, some shelter for protecting our body from weather, some water to drink etc. agreed when we have families, we have much more responsibilities, but still we can try to do our best and not be too bothered or get anxious with what shall happen in future with us or with our families - we can work as per our responsibility and since nothing is in our control, so we can also relax and not get too stressed in our lives. this is not to say that we should run away from our responsibilities, rather we should try to act morally correct in every situation we face, there by making this life itself has a spiritual path on which we travel.
the most wonderful thing, which we have is that we are alive.
i am a completely ignorant person with all defilements of lust, anger, greed, hatred, attachment and ego in my mind - so obviously i cannot say the above things, but the above things came to my mind based on my theoretical understanding of teachings of Zen monks. so just thought of sharing these thoughts with you all. if you find whatever is written above is rubbish, then i am sorry for your time getting wasted in reading this thread.
metta to all sentient beings.
4
Comments
Thank you for sharing, I agree.
Life is beautiful, rare and fleeting so I think we should be nourishing its growth.
I love you too.
Life is ugly for those who are around ugliness!!!
Simple as that!
Life is whatever you are experiencing!!!
At this very moment i am writing this and i have a nice cup of tea next to me, feet up, takeaway on its way, lovely missus coming round - life is pretty nice at the moment!
However;
A person who is going through abuse right now as we speak (somewhere in the world) i wonder if they would say "life is beautiful" or they might think "life is horrible"
Life isnt just what happens when we are busy telling others what life is...
Life is whatever you are doing RIGHT NOW............. And NOW.............. And NOW!!
till, there is a sense of an I-ness involved, there would be grasping and rejecting, which will obstruct for experiencing the wonderfulness of life in its entirety. rather, self is part of whole and whole is not complete without self - something like a drop in an ocean - a drop is not ocean, but without drop there is no ocean - so a drop is in a ocean and a ocean is in a drop as the ocean gets manifested from a drop.
suffering - seems bad, but is good - because without it, we cannot see how defiled we are.
pleasure - seems good, but is bad - because it just keeps on adding to our defilements.
colours - seem real, but do not exist as such, rather is a magic created by our brain's analysis of different frequencies of electro-magnetic waves.
sounds - seem real, but do not exist as such, rather is a magic created by our brain's analysis of the vibrations of the ear drums.
body - seems to be ours, but is not ours.
mind - seems to be ours, but is not ours.
birth - seems nice, but is not nice because with birth, comes life which has suffering in it.
death - seems bad, but is not bad because it teaches the most important lesson of whatever arises, stays for a while and then ceases.
Life has both pleasure and pain in it. if there was no pain, then pleasure would lose its meaning and vice versa. pain exists because pleasure exists and vice versa - conventionally both exists and ultimately nothing exists in and of itself.
Life is wonderful in its each moment. we find suffering in life because we want things to go our way. the self, with which we experience the world, is our small self, which we have created around us by taking our body and mind as self, the relatives or friends as dear to self, enemies as something to hate and others who do not affect our emotions as they are not related to us in anyway. But when we take the bigger self of oneness of everything, then as Dogen explained, we are time being that each moment is complete in and of itself, we are time and we share each moment of our life with all sentient and insentient beings in that moment - but due to our sense of small self, we grasp at phenomenon by holding on to experiences we find pleasurable or to avoid the experiences by trying to get away from them which we find painful. But if we live moment-to-moment, there will be nothing pleasurable, nor painful.
the wonderfulness of life is that we have to do something in life - and the strange thing is really we cannot do anything because nothing is in our control, as even our body and our mind are not in our control, though the paradox here is still we can choose right view over wrong view to act in every moment of our life - so what to do in life? - zen says to live life in each moment by fully accepting whatever happens in that moment. but why are we not able to do it? i think it is because we get feared inside us, that if this thing goes not in this way but that way, then what will happen to me and to people for whom i am responsible? if i lose this thing, how much tragedy will come on me? what will others think about me? - all these things arising from the small self, which we create around us - but if we are truely in the moment, there will be just arising and ceasing of conditions, based on the arising and ceasing of their causal conditions.
Middle way.
You know why we practice when 'life is beautiful'?
Because change happens. Careful now.