Pain

May 21, 2008 15:14


I found this quote from the Buddhist article "Right Attitude" by Jack Kornfield.

"You can't open the heart for pleasure and not feel the pain. The world is dual; it's up/down, light/dark, hot/cold, and when we open, we discover a kind of capacity for joy and for understanding which allows for the fact that life has pleasure and pain. It's got them both. If you don't want pain, go to another planet, because this one has light and dark, sweet and sour, hot and cold, and pleasure and pain. That's the game. ...  Don't try and change it. There are wonderful things you can learn from it. This is from the Sufis again:
Overcome any bitterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain that was entrusted to you. Like the mother of the world who carries the pain of the world in her heart, each one of us is part of her heart and therefore each is endowed with a certain measure of cosmic pain. You are sharing in the totality of that pain and are called upon to meet it in joy instead of self-pity.

It's not a judgment but rather realizing we have this capacity, we have a beautiful capacity to suffer, and we have a beautiful capacity to love, and we have a beautiful capacity to open to the richness of our experience which has all that in it..."

pain

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