Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything . Live the questions now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it , live along some distant day into the answer.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Oh man. It is Two Pm on a cold, and windy afternoon and I am just sitting down to write now. I am a little out of sorts these days, flapping around like a flounder washed onto shore by the tides. Someone put me back in the water please! lol. I feel somewhat overwhelmed and restless, confused about where I am going and why.
These are the questions that keep pounding in my head as I flap around, very unproductively, (questions that were relayed by Sister True Dedication in the linked video below):
Who am I?
What do I really want in my life?
What am I here, on earth, to do?
What and who can I trust? What and who can I count on and rely on especially when I feel so overwhelmed?
Where am I going? Where do I want to go?
How can I help?
Do you ever find yourself asking these questions? Do you know where you are going and why?
Sister True Dedication relays a famous Buddhist story about a man standing at a crossroads watching another man zoom by on a fast moving horse. The pedestrian calls out to the man on the horse, "Where are you going?" And the man on the horse answers, "I don't know. Ask the horse!"
Ask the Horse
So many of us are at crossroads in our lives wondering what road to take and where it will lead. We see people moving swiftly and confidently in some direction and want to know where they are going, assuming that it must be in the "right" direction...only to find out they are being carried along by some energy they have so little control of. Most humans really do not know where they are going. They have no control of that momentum they are riding, be it the momentum of a collective conditioning, an ego pursuit or the flow of Life itself. Most humans have not tamed the mind enough to have the above questions answered in a clear way. They are too busy unconsciously moving and doing to even ask them.
Though I love the Buddhist interpretation of that tale, I look at it a little differently after thoroughly reading the quote above. Rilke in the above quote tells us , it is okay to be carried along if it is Life that is moving us. He is , in a sense, saying that it is better to go with the flow of Life than it is to stand stuck at crossroads asking questions we just are not capable of answering.
We need to live the questions knowing that in this incarnation we may never have the answers to them. It is much more important to live them, ask them, love them as we go day to day, trusting that Life is taking us somewhere and that we might actually have the answers met at some point. More important than the answers, however, is the living.
Hmm! Does that mean we do not try to tame these minds that are carrying us along, often to unwholesome destinations? Does it mean we should not be skillful riders of Life's energy flow?
I believe we need to take riding lessons and be committed to a Life practice even though we may not always be able to control the horse or the destination it takes us in. We can learn to tame the mind, even if we cannot tame the horse (Life). I also believe, we need to keep those questions in our heart, ask them, and live them daily . We must love the questions even if the answers lie behind locked doors or in books we cannot read because the language is something we do not yet understand.
All is well.
Plum Village ( August,2016) Know Your Body, Know Your Mind/ Sister True Dedication. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vggg6KYmEUM
No comments:
Post a Comment