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!
9 comments:
hi ruth. i'm glad you have a blog. it makes perfect sense, you having a blog. gooood.
hey, one tip: you can include this little html tag in your image tags to make the flow right into the paragraph. write align=left or align=right right in the tag, before the final > and it'll look great!
Nate, thanks! I tried it a couple different ways (where I entered the words), but it didn't work. Maybe I didn't pick the "final" >, or maybe I needed a /?
Can you please show me where and how to write it? (I tried cutting and pasting the html language here, but of course I can't continue because it thinks I want to add this to this page!)
(I've been wanting to do this, so I hope I can figure it out!)
Nate, I did it! Thank you very much. I finally found the right spot to place it. :|
I am so thoroughly loving your posts, Ruth, and can hardly wait each day to find out what will be next. I am sooooo glad you're finding joy in this simplest of pleasures. And I very much feast on your words/thought. You know I do. I chew the cud, so to speak!
Boots, it's a great connection for us. One more!
Love.
mom (wilma), you should get a blog too! :)
I agree with Nate, Wilm. It's fun to express whatever's going on in and around you! Everybody's is unique. I need a Wilma blog. :)
yes. yes yes!
i love this entry bc it is exactly what i needed to hear.
thank you.
i love your icon by the way! it's beautiful. like an embroidery.
Yay, Lesley!
I'm glad you like the icon. You're the first person to mention it. It's a lotus, you know. You're right, it does look like embroidery, which I hadn't thought of.
I'm glad you got what you needed, my daughtuh.
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