The following is from It's Up to You, by Dzigar Kongtrul.
The solitude of nature brings a touch of melancholy or sadness to the mind. Alone with the trees and wind and the birds, ants, and wild animals, you naturally begin to reflect more deeply. As your view of what is meaningful becomes more vast, your sense of melancholy deepens. You may notice something ironic: sitting quietly alone, you may feel less isolated from the world than you do when you're busily engaged in the hustle and bustle of your everyday lives.The thing that struck me in this passage is the presence of that sadness beneath everything else. I'm going to go off on a tangent here, but I think it's an important one.
Some people feel a strong attraction to this unfamiliar feeling of melancholy -- and others, a strong urge to run away. In either case, the important thing is to appreciate our underlying sadness. It is a hint of a deeper intelligence that is normally obscured by the distractions of daily life. In solitude, this natural faculty of our mind comes out of an almost dormant state. Looking out at the natural beauty around us, we realize how much there is to appreciate beyond the narrow focus of ego -- and how meaningless is our madly driven life.
The many distractions that we usually find so significant become less important or pointless. We see how, instead of entertaining us, they generate the hassles of gathering and maintaining, and how this endless cycle of busyness ties up our intelligence. In solitary retreat, we can put our intelligence to better use: We can use it to achieve something of true and lasting benefit for this life.
Spending time in solitude allows many positive qualities to break through the crust of mundane mind -- and all of them point to the source of true happiness and freedom from suffering. This is our natural birthright.
When our lives are out of balance, or when we are not following our path, or when we are in an unhealthy situation -- even before our conscious minds realize that something is wrong, we may begin to sense that underlying sadness.
It isn't depression, necessarily, but I think melancholy is the right word for it. We might feel blue for no apparent reason because we are so caught up in the day to day grind that we lose touch with ourselves. Then one day, almost out of nowhere it may seem, a yoga session, or a chiropractic adjustment, or a massage session breaks down the wall and it all comes flooding back to us.
If we can face it, we begin to see all the ways that we have lost ourselves. Suddenly we are present in our lives in ways we may never have experienced before. What an amazing opportunity. What an awakening.
One need not be a Buddhist to see the beauty of such an experience. If we can stay present to the process, we have an opportunity to redirect our lives in ways that can align ourselves with our deeper purpose here, whatever that may be.
And we all have a purpose in this life. That may sound New Agey, but it's not some mysterious thing. We all have things we are passionate about, things at which we are good that make us feel fulfilled. The trick is to discover how to make a living doing that thing -- when we can, it all falls into place and the rest of our lives begin to make more sense as well.
When we can stop being about the distractions -- being fused with them, or driven by them -- we can start to be about ourselves, who we are at the deepest levels. That's when life really begins to get interesting.
Tags:
1 comment:
Well said -
Post a Comment