Run from the "scary" - or engage, dance with it?

Sometimes when something scary is coming at you, the right thing to do is run, and sometimes it's to engage - dance with it. It is important whether most of the "scary" is coming from inside or from outside yourself. The devil of it is knowing what is what. Often we don't know clearly until after the fact. Complex mixtures of inner and outer produce uncertainty, hesitation, on & off feelings and behavior. All we can do is the best we can each day, and consciously be trying to do the next right thing and avoid cruelty.

Like manure, we do not throw our neuroses away, but we spread them on our garden; they become part of our richness.

"In Buddhism, we express our willingness to be realistic through the practice of meditation. Meditation is not a matter of trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss, or tranquility, nor is it attempting to become a better person. It is simply the creation of a space in which we are able to expose and undo our neurotic games, our self-deceptions, our hidden fears and hopes. We provide space by the simple discipline of doing nothing. Actually, doing nothing is very difficult. At first, we must begin by approximating doing nothing, and gradually our practice will develop. So meditation is a way of churning out the neuroses of mind and using them as a part of our practice. Like manure, we do not throw our neuroses away, but we spread them on our garden; they become part of our richness."

-Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
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Miscellany

September 11, 2011

I still don't have an answer to my question whether there is such a thing as unrequited hate.

The sound of one hand clapping is almost impossible to hear.
October 24, 2011: I did say "almost." Listen.

July 19, 2011

A politician is somebody who campaigns hard for the job, claiming he can do it better, but then when he's in office and things don't go as promised, says it's the other guy's fault.

Achieving "balance" in life is chancy and often short-lived -- like the see-saw at the perfect moment of balance when neither side is moving; like the carnival "Loop" ride hanging you motionless upside down for a deathly long instant.

The hardest thing about writing is actually writing.

Passion co-existing with equanimity is a challenge for me. Good news. Just a few years ago I didn't know or care about this. Today I can make it a goal and get better at it.

I have known believers in God whose lack of imagination was shown in their belief (i.e., belief in a "small" God), and I have known atheists whose lack of imagination was revealed in their unwillingness or inability to conceive even dimly of a vast unimaginable power in creation beyond their own ability to perceive and understand. In fact, I have to say that these two groups of people have more in common than not.

Once, out under the stars on a sweet dark night with someone special, a moonless clear night in the country, stars breathtakingly brilliant, Milky Way galaxy vivid, soft not-too-warm-just-right breeze, no doubt an ineffable romantic moment -- the absurd hyena of a thought came to me, "Almost as beautiful as Las Vegas at night." I kept my mouth shut. I did not laugh out loud. That time I did not spoil the moment.

The Moment | Book by Douglas Kennedy - Simon & Schuster

 

REVIEW - independent.co.uk

I just finished reading this book, was greatly surprised and moved by it. A "love of a lifetime" story written by a male author, told by a male first person narrator, which is unusual in itself. Not at all a potboiler romance, not at all sappy, but a deep and sensitive telling full of psychological insight, complexity and sublety, along with respect for the ambiguities, the uncertainties, the glory and the sorrow of "true" love, of love and happiness in the grasp of two people, and then gone, but never reprised and never forgotten. The main action took place in Cold War Berlin before the Wall came down, and is recalled and relived 26 years later after the female protagonist has died, and old journals come to light. There is a lot of good observation and storytelling about life in divided Berlin during the last years of the Cold War, but it surrounds and informs the central story of the love between the two main characters. I recommend this book for anyone who is intrigued by the idea of a great love story in a le Carré setting.