That was today’s Buddhist wisdom for the day from Beliefnet.com.
I confess, I’ve been looking forward all morning to my lunch hour when I could work on a new blog post! And I’ve also been looking forward to seeing a movie after work with my friend Inge: “End of the Spear,” the true story of the American missionaries killed by Auca Indians in the 1950s.
While there’s nothing wrong with looking forward to a pleasing experience, I know that I’d rather be doing that thing I look forward to, and so how completely in the NOW can I be? This reminds me of my sister’s recent post on her blog about getting work done before play. We tend to divide up our experiences that way: work and play.
Recently I’ve tried to look at household tasks – and other traditionally “unpleasant” aspects of daily life -- as elements of life that contain beauty, tried to find ways to not split the world into dualities of like and dislike, beauty and ugliness, work and play. If I live in this moment and accept what is happening without resistance, I find I live more completely. And why wouldn’t I want to see beauty in everything?
Is the story in the film I'll see after work a good example of finding beauty in horror? Yes. But I'm not just writing here about results, i.e., the fact that good came from tragedy in the story. How can I find beauty right now, without attachment to a result?
Hint: This woman scrubbing the barn floor (could be me!) might see green grass and birds through the door, the barn cat jumping from pillar to post, feel the breeze blow through the barn, smell the hay, etc. Besides the pleasure of having a clean barn floor!
Post a Comment