“I respectfully urge you who study the mystery, do not pass your days and nights in vain.”
Last lines of the Sandokai
What does it mean to not waste your life? How do we do it, not pass our days and nights in vain?
Over the past few years, I have been much more intimate with “don’t know” than in the past. Sometimes, it feels like I’m drifting along, which my little mind associates with “wasting life.” Other times, it makes total sense. I really didn’t know what all was going in the past either; I just thought I did. It’s easy enough when you have a lot of the “normal” markers (like a steady job, home to take care of, etc.) in an adult life to forget about not knowing. And to assume that what you are doing is “not a waste,” or not a total waste anyway. When you strip away a lot of those normal markers, however, you start to see that your stories might not be terribly accurate.
I’m really getting a sense these days as to why so many of us do everything in our power to resist liberation. In the depths of our hearts, we want to be in touch with our boundlessness. But even small shifts towards that, like letting go of some of the conventional things that once defined you (or so you thought anyway) brings with it a palpable fear, confusion, and desire to get back some stable ground.
A friend of mine, who has been struggling to make a few key decisions in her life, recently said something like “I don’t want to live the rest of my life doing the same things.” But then she goes back to doing so, for now (that’s what we all think, for now).
Like my friend, I have done the “for now” return many times.
This returning doesn’t define either of us, but it does make me think that the mind is so desperate for things to be stable and predictable, even if it’s causing a crap load of suffering.
In living in a more stripped down way over the past two years, I have been trying to break through whatever it is that makes that “for now” so attractive. Attachment. Fear. Stories about success and failure. Desiring that things are stable and predictable.
It’s a long list; I’m not through it all yet, and may never be in this lifetime.
What does it mean to not waste your life? How do we do it, not pass our days and nights in vain?
Image Credit
Shitou Xiqian, author or Sandokai. Artist Unknown. From Wikipedia
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