A Zen Koan:
A student asked, “When times of great difficulty visit us, how should we meet them?”
The teacher said, “Welcome.”
That does not mean we love and embrace illness, financial stress, death of a loved one. It means we realize we are human, and life has a big chunk of suffering in store for everyone, and we treat it like another lesson to be learned and integrated in school. We learn about ourselves and grow from it. Life is constantly asking us to grow, to expand our souls until we are so large as a soul only light remains. We return to the source whatever it is. The lighter we become the lighter our entry will be to the light.
That does not mean we do not experience negative emotions, we can cry, yell, spit and shout. Until such time that we realize how useless all that expanded energy is and we start to laugh at ourselves. The trick is to let those emotions roar until they transform into something else on their own.
Welcoming life as is, no matter what it is, helps us to deal with things that come up without getting stuck, attached. If you don't allow yourself to roar, you will live in constant fear trying to control all that life brings. It is like being a rock in a river, instead of letting go and going with the flow.
A student asked, “When times of great difficulty visit us, how should we meet them?”
The teacher said, “Welcome.”
That does not mean we love and embrace illness, financial stress, death of a loved one. It means we realize we are human, and life has a big chunk of suffering in store for everyone, and we treat it like another lesson to be learned and integrated in school. We learn about ourselves and grow from it. Life is constantly asking us to grow, to expand our souls until we are so large as a soul only light remains. We return to the source whatever it is. The lighter we become the lighter our entry will be to the light.
That does not mean we do not experience negative emotions, we can cry, yell, spit and shout. Until such time that we realize how useless all that expanded energy is and we start to laugh at ourselves. The trick is to let those emotions roar until they transform into something else on their own.
Welcoming life as is, no matter what it is, helps us to deal with things that come up without getting stuck, attached. If you don't allow yourself to roar, you will live in constant fear trying to control all that life brings. It is like being a rock in a river, instead of letting go and going with the flow.
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