Introduction to the gentle journey

". . . we easily get stuck in believing . . . that the way we've framed everything in our thoughts is how things actually are."

Steve Hagen

Four days after moving from central Florida to Oklahoma City, I failed to yield, our car was hit by a truck, and my wife has spent 6 days in the hospital and faces follow-up surgery to get back to a repaired self. We left Florida with great hopes that things would be a lot better when we returned to the place where we met and were married. Often the journey of life looks anything but gentle. Problems follow problems. Our pain makes it difficult to remember painlessness, and as for pleasure, forget about it if you're in pain. But if life is difficult it is because my mind brands it as difficult.

"Anguish emerges from craving for life to be other than it is. . . . In yearning for anguis to be assuaged in such a ways, we reinforce what creates anguish in the first place: the craving fro life to be other than it is. . . . The more acute the anguish, the more we want to be rid of it, but the more we want to be rid of it, the more acute it gets."

Stephen Batchelor

Nothing that happens is as significant as what I think about what happens. Wanting, craving, desire, yearning are thoughts that turn the events of life into good or bad. Without want, craving, and desire, nothing that happens is good or bad, it is just what happens.

This does not mean that I don't suffer. It doesn't mean that I am not hurt by events, or that I am pained and unhappy by certain consequences and outcomes, because I am.

". . . look for moments of rest between waves of tears and anger and . . . rest in the awareness."

Kornfield

Living in awareness that good and bad are mental concepts will not eliminate our human reactions. We will still think, and feel that this event or that happening is either good, or bad. We still suffer. We still die. But even when we suffer, if we live with awareness, or what the Buddhists call mindfulness, we can't suffer in ignorance. There will remain at some place in our brain, this thought that it is our thoughts that are hurting us. We can suffer and surrender to hopelessness, or we can take on our problems and pains to gain insight, awareness, mindfulness, strength and peace.

"It is from hardship rather than ease that we gather wisdom. We need to develop the capacity to draw strength from our hardships . . . to ignite the thunder flame of our own heart and let it illuminate the stormy night."

Aung San Suu Kyi