The Myth of Control

Let me try to explain to you how things really are.

We humans do like to think that we are different from other living things, a tree or a mammal of some kind, a bird. But we are not.

We have no more control than they do, although we have spent 300 years fooling ourselves that with our cleverness we can make life predictable.

How like us to try to change the world to assuage our fears instead of trying to change ourselves to accept that life is always, ALWAYS change. And that we are not in control.

You are not in control if you keep yourself very small and quiet. You are not in control if you always get A* grades out of life. You are not in control if everybody likes you. You are not in control if you obey all the rules, you are not in control if you break them.

I might die tomorrow. So might you. So might someone you love.

Given this fact, the answer is not to hold on ever tighter to the myth of control.

The answer is to glory in the wonder of it all. The beauty and the love. The rising and the falling. The sunshine and the rain. The gifts that fall into your hands from nowhere and deserve to be cherished. The losses that tear you apart in one fell swoop, or slowly like a thousand paper cuts.

This is a whole life. And there is nothing you can do but live in wonder at it, hold yourself in warmth and kindness when the losses come and let joy move you when the moon is bright and the night calls for dancing.

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You are Buddha

Being a well-known enlightened being is a rare thing - those guys usually want to stay hidden, living their wholeness privately and for the love of it. Not many are called to teach or to spread the word widely, but if they are, then they do it for love.

That Buddha is called Buddha is an anomaly really - he was an awakened one, but not the awakened one. He knew this himself and he tried so hard to share that wisdom with his students. His last words were to this end - do not rely upon me for your enlightenment, he said, you must be your own light.

Be the light and share the light.

Awakening does not call for fame or renown, it simply calls for doing what you do, wholly, quietly and beautifully. Whether it’s walking the dog or washing the dishes. There is nothing that is too humble for it.

So much peace comes from this way of living. It is a choice, that’s all. A choice that the one we know as the Buddha made beautifully, but one that you can make too. No pressure, no striving, just being delightfully who you are and meaning it.

The truth is that there is no alternative to being who you already are. Haven’t you worked that out yet?

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Empathy

What empathy is not: imagining someone else’s pain, thinking about how you would feel in that situation and projecting that feeling on to another.

What empathy is: Love and the practice of abiding in love.

Empathy is love in action: listening carefully, paying attention, sitting alongside someone as they go through something. Saying to them, this isn’t my pain, it is yours and I am here with you for as long as it lasts. Today is not my day for sorrow, but I have known sorrow and will again, today is your time and I am here.