Ajahn Chan, a wonderful Buddhist teacher of many of the Western teachers of mindfulness meditation, would take a glass that he always drank out of, hold it up and say:
"I love this glass. Do you see this? I love this glass. It holds the water admirably. When the sun shines on it, it reflects the light beautifully. When I tap it, it has a lovely ring.
Yet for me, the glass is already broken. When the wind knocks it over or my elbow knocks it off the shelf and it falls to the ground and shatters I say, 'Of course.' But when I understand that this glass is already broken, every minute with it is precious."
I think we can read this parable and just as easily replace the glass with our own tender hearts, feelings, life experiences, and all the other "vessels" that hold the precious nectar of our existence.
We rarely comprehend how suddenly and yet certainly everything in life will change. Many people right now on the planet are learning this hard aspect of reality through weather events of magnitudes unforeseen (at least that we in our limited capacity know about). When these cataclysmic events occur through earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, hurricanes, tornados, raging blizzards, avalanches, we (some individually, others collectively) get jarred out of our mundane focus on day to day events and touch the Truth of our lives: we will not live forever.
At least not in this body or in one particular time and space. So, death too, acts as a wake up call to encourage and inspire us to live our best life right now. To hone in on Love, Peace, Kindness, Compassion, Happiness, Patience, Humor, and Gratitude. Nothing is really more important, is it?
As the great Tibetan sage Je Tsong Khapa teaches, "Death is certainty. Life is uncertainty."
So often, we resist or fail to acknowledge that life is fleeting, already coming to an end, just by being in a moment of a temporary taste of it. When things do not go our way, we forget life is going to change. When things go our way, we forget life is going to change.
Our hearts are beautiful, luminous, fragile, holding a lovely unique aspect of the divinity within, our Buddha nature.
The secret to growing and growing in appreciation of the true power of the heart, is that like the glass that is destined to break, our own hearts will shatter again and again if we are present to this life.
But just like the glass, even when left in shards, our hearts can go back into the metaphorical kiln for meltdown, re-firing, re-working, re-creating out of an act of love and intention to sometimes be shattered but never truly broken. When we emerge from the heartbreak, we just might be surprised at our new appreciation for the nature of this incarnation and function.
It allows us to wake up to the reality of Love's transcendent nature. It precludes our birth, sustains our life, and graces our passing to connect us with all things that ever lived or that ever will live. There is profound humility woven into every heart just by this very nature of reality. But, so often we rush past not taking a minute to grow still and quiet, to absorb and embody that great Truth that we are Love incarnate, there is a deep seed planted in each heart waiting to flower into this expression in full bloom. So, just take a moment now and reflect on the resilient, transparent, strong, impermanent glass.
And this time, we might just take a moment to admire what is in our hands and how admirably it holds life.
No comments:
Post a Comment