Since I heard the election results last week I’ve been realizing that it’s up to me to
Make a Choice
about how I want to live in the coming years. Am I going to let the chaos and fear that is now surrounding us rule my emotions and thoughts? Or am I instead going to steer by my own inner compass based upon the values of goodness and beauty? I find myself needing to make the choice towards goodness and beauty over and over again, interrupting fearful and negative narratives in my mind.
This making a choice about how I want to live reminds me of the indigenous peoples’ story of the two wolves…
An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.
“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
— Two Wolves, Virtues for Life
It’s hard not to get caught up in fear, anger, and resentment with what I’m hearing in the news about the plans of the new administration. I am finding that I need to limit how much news and commentary I listen to and read right now. Instead I am focusing more and more on spending time in nature, appreciating beauty, writing, spending time with friends, and making photographs.
I keep asking myself “How can I contribute to the highest good in this moment?” And often the answer I come up with is to simply be myself and stand for goodness, kindness, and compassion in the midst of everything. There may come a time when I feel compelled to other actions. But now is not that moment.
I found this excerpt from an interview with Buddhist monk, Matthieu Riccard very helpful. Perhaps you will too…
Now, happiness as it is defined by scientists and also in Buddhism (what we call suka), is not a sensation. You can have this sense of compassion, of meaning and so forth, even in sadness, even if you lost someone dear. But, still, wisdom, compassion, is still there. So, it’s a way of being. Unlike pleasure that exhausts itself as you experience it, the sense of the state of mind or state of being — the more you experience [compassion], the more it gets deeper and stable.
So what is it made of? There’s no happiness center in the brain. So, first of all, our control of the outer condition is limited, is transient, and very often illusory. So if you only put your hope and fear in the outer condition, again, you are in for a rough ride. But the way we experience the world can be translated either into misery or wellbeing. So the way we perceive the world is very important, but also happiness is actually the result of enhancing a number of fundamental human qualities. So to achieve an exceptionally healthy mind that give us the resources to deal with the ups and downs of life and various emotion that come in our life.
So those qualities, as a cluster, each of them can be cultivated as a skill. Among them foremost is altruism, compassion, benevolence, but also, the faculty of inner spaciousness (so that we can keep inner peace even in the face of adversity), resilience and inner freedom (not to be the slave of your own thoughts and emotion and so forth) — so all those qualities together create a way of being, a very healthy, optimal way of being, that is kind of the platform to which we stand in life.
There will still be the ups and downs of joys and sorrows, but where you come back is your baseline. And that baseline could be mostly, at the end, be made of deep fulfillment, a sense of Felicity. And so, that’s what we were looking for, and what we can cultivate.
— Matthieu Riccard, Stories and Insights from the ‘World’s Happiest Man’
Sending lots of love and wishes for peace to all of you.
May you walk in beauty.
Note: Photos from a walk in a park yesterday, made with my iPhone.
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