Good Advice

Mock me for having 10,000+ emails in my inbox all the time if you want, but I'm telling you you're missing out.

I was searching for something unrelated and found the sweetest email from my big brother while he was in the Peace Corps in Vanuatu to his terrified little sister who had recently graduated college and was feeling lost. I turned to a book on Buddhism he'd given me before he left ("lent", "gave"...what is the difference, really?), something I keep telling myself I'm going to do again any day now and haven't yet. There was a lot and it was all great but my favorite passage was this one:

"We get so wrapped up in our delusions, desires, attachments, plans, fears, expectations, etc. that we forget to actually live our life.  Yes, we need to do things like plan and save for retirement.  We don't, however, need to save every penny we can so that our life sucks today but will be full of comforts in 20 years.  What if you get hit by a bus in 19?  The practice is about finding the balance of living like you'll die tomorrow and planning like you'll live forever.  Of course you need to make plans, improve yourself, build relationships, get an education, and save for the future.  You also need to live your life.  There is so much in our experience every day that we ignore.  So much beauty we miss when we are stuck in our heads.  I will find myself striding down the road to Melsisi, thinking about my lesson for the day or what I'm going to eat for dinner, or what witty comeback I should have made hours earlier.  Then something will catch my attention and I'll realize that I've been completely ignoring this beautiful place in which I live."

It's good advice. Advice I've heard from everyone, advice that is easy to think about and (at least in my case) almost impossible to follow. But it felt so good, hearing it from him. Hearing that your self is just a story that you cling to even though it's always changing and that "Suffering is caused by our desire for the world to be other than as it is." 

My last post is an example of me 100% rebelling against all of this advice. Dwelling on the story that we weren't where we wanted to be as siblings and now we don't get to get there. Clinging to the idea that he isn't really dead, that it's my job to save him and also everyone. I am not good at following this advice no matter how many times I hear it or who I hear it from. I will not get better at it just because I read the words he wrote to me five years ago.

But just for a minute, while I was reading them, I got to feel pure, unattached grief without shame or blame or clinging or terror or anxiety. Just love with no place to go.