"The purpose of our spiritual life as human beings is to pass through the
difficulties that life brings us, and to allow these things to pass through
us without getting hooked—to become more like a witness to the events
without craving, just to be aware of them. That is the difficulty. Life is
just change, and maybe your wife passes away. To see Guruji’s wife pass
away was very interesting. He felt attachment toward his wife. And I remember
him telling me something in Sanskrit like, “Time is being eaten
by a rat, you have to accept that, everything has its expiration date.”
You have to accept that everything is changing, everything is passing
away. I remember Guruji crying and telling me that. “Yesterday Amma was
here. Today, is gone. Yesterday here . . .” And he was crying so strongly. He
was not pretending. He was in the middle of suffering this attachment to
his wife. He was not going to see her anymore, and he was suffering. And
at the same time, he surrendered himself completely to this suffering
and it was interesting to see how he recovered. He was smiling again one
month later. He was so happy. And he was not happy because his wife
was gone. He could express his love toward her but he could accept that
things were changing. That is detachment. You have to say goodbye to
things that are living. You cannot control that. Life is bringing you so
much, especially if you have a family. All the time things you want are
not coming, and things that you don’t want are coming. You see the attachment
and the aversion and desire and everything right there."
(Tomas Zorzo)
(Extracted from, Guruji: A Portrait of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois Through the Eyes of His Students
, by Guy Donahaye, Eddie Stern)
4 Insightful Comments:
Great post...perfect for me in this moment
I have to disagree, The purpose of our spiritual life as human beings is NOT to pass through the
difficulties that life brings us, but to remember our eternal occupation of loving and serving God.
These posts from the new book have been incredibly inspiring. Thanks for posting them.
@ Craig - Wholeheartedly, what you say rings true, and in the same breath there are many facets to the truth. The way I interpreted this excerpt is when fully accepting the pain and suffering we feel, allowing it to pass through our being, we can THEN continue to live in our "eternal occupation of loving and serving God."
The nature of having a body is that there will be times of attachment and detachment. Though we are inherently spiritual, we are in human form as well. The paradox. Of course there is a process of raising about the duality as well.
No argument here. I understand where you are coming from. Thank you.
XOXO
Post a Comment