I love these Buddha Doodles cartoons.
"Thoughts... are just thoughts. Not who you are."
I frequently get swept up in my own thinking. It takes an act of will to get away from them. Each time I remember this, and do it, I'm grateful for it.
Every so often I stumble across something that really speaks to mindfulness and will go out of my way to share it with others.
Here's just such a thing:
"To start the next chapter of your life... you must quit re-reading the last ones."
I saw it on Facebook, after having a conversation with my sister-in-law about just this very topic. The reason I made sure to grab a copy of it is not just because of the message, but because like all this stuff, it applies just as much to me.
I have my own things I get stuck-in-the-past about. One such thing is my getting back in shape. I had lost a lot of weight previously. Became a really fit runner. Ran races. All great stuff.
Lately, I've been struggling to get back there again, to be in the same place I was.
I can't.
I can be in a new place. It doesn't matter what came before. What matters is what's happening now.
Sometimes I forget that. Then I remember. Grateful for that.
I really, really love the animated series Young Justice. It's about the sidekicks to the major Justice League heroes, who band together to form their own team.
The whole series is available on Netflix. I've watched it countless times.
But never before with my old friend Scott. I've known him for ages. He was one of the first people I met in college. We've been friends since. We don't see much of one another these days, because we have busy lives. But this one particular Sunday we got together, went out for burgers, and came back to my house so I could introduce him to this longtime pleasure of mine.
I got him hooked. He loves it too.
My grandmother used to say that a good thing becomes a great thing, when you share it with someone you love.
A couple of weeks ago, I was having a Very Busy Saturday. I had to run a few errands before meeting my family for dinner, and rushed around trying to get them done. Ever have those days where it feels like you're swimming against the very strong current of life's river?
It sure seemed like that's how things were going for me that day. Traffic was slow, people kept cutting me off, all sorts of things like that. My last stop was at an IKEA to get Missy a present. If you must know, a plushie Carrot like this one:
She really likes Broccoli, my plush that Squee gave me, and often cuddles with her. I wanted to get her Carrot so she could have her own special cuddle buddy for when Broccoli and I aren't around.
Anyhow, the particular mall where that IKEA is, that's maybe the most trafficked, busy, crazy place in town. People drive way too fast, cut each other off, the whole thing is a giant stress nightmare. I was trying to make a left turn onto the street where the store was, and had this super aggressive guy behind me. He kept honking at me, trying to make me force my way across the traffic.
Eventually I did make the turn, and he did too, actually tried cutting me off to get around me and get into the garage. We almost hit each other! As we pulled into the underground garage, he was right behind me, making me very nervous.
That was when I felt the current of life's river turn with me. (Or maybe just stopped obsessing about what a stressful day I was having, same difference, whatevs!) As we came around a corner, me and my stress-tail, I saw a parking spot only I could take - because it was reserved for hybrid cars like mine.
I parked, and he sped away, driving much too quickly in the crowded underground lot.
I sat there for a moment, catching my breath, and then stopped to take a picture of the sign in front of the spot, because I was really, really grateful for it.
The other day I was trying to explain the concept of te to a good friend. Te, pronounced sort of like "duh", is really, really, hard to understand.
Directly, one might say that Te is "virtue", or "morality", or even more loftily "power". The Tao te Ching literally translates to "The book of the Way and its power."
None of which really cover it. All those things make it sound very inaccessible, high, and mighty.
But te isn't like that. Te is doing what you can, mindfully, presently, without letting fear or doubt stop you. In fact, it's really the very doing of such a thing, precisely when fear and doubt tell you otherwise. It's not so much being brave - it's doing what you can, without letting what you think you can't do get in your way. Like Piglet, when he went for help after Owl's tree house fell over on The Very Blustery Day. Piglet has amazing te. So much so, that there's a great book about this called The Te of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff.
That was when I realized I had a perfect example of te from my recent trip to Chicago. I sang karaoke for my first time ever, in front of a group of mostly complete strangers. I'm pretty brash and ballsy about a lot of things, I'm not afraid to do public speaking. (I even enjoy it!) But singing, on a stage, that's another thing altogether.
But I just took a deep breath, picked a song I wanted, and ran full-tilt boogie towards the thing I feared.
It turned out pretty good too.