As I was meditating this morning for some unknown reason something I read and we discussed at my book club a few months ago came up for me. It is from the five recollections some Buddhist communities remind themselves of daily.
The two that have always kind of bothered me were I am of the nature to be ill and the other is I am of the nature to die.
Of course, in our human manifestation we are indeed subject to illness and to death, it is part of the human condition but there’s something about these statements that seems so incomplete to me. I can see how it is important to recognize this in the physical because we can delude ourselves at times and think we’re somehow beyond all that.
But, what about our Divine Nature which is eternal and whole? How doe it fit for me to focus on the fact that I can get sick, and I will die? As I sat with this seeming dilemma this morning what became clear to me is that it isn’t an either/or proposition but rather, we live in the dynamic tension between our nature to be ill and our innate wholeness, just as we live in the tension between our inevitable physical death and our eternal Spiritual nature.
There’s something freeing in this awareness for me. I can’t really describe how it has affected me, but it just feels different, more whole and real somehow. I can see how this is how so much of life works and the more we can make peace with the dynamic tension between seeming opposites the less stress we feel.
Who knows why these ideas showed up today but I’m kind of glad they did…
Namaste
