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Advice on Handling the Ups and Downs of Life from a Buddhist Meditation Master
You jump out of the plane. Then, as you plummet downward, you suddenly realize with horror you don’t have a parachute.
Some version of this nightmare has crossed most of our minds. We can all imagine the fear and helplessness of having nothing to stop us, nothing to stabilize us, and nothing to save us.
But, doesn’t life sometimes feel like this, too? Don’t you sometimes feel like you’re falling and tumbling through the air, hurtling toward the ground without a parachute? Your fear and anxiety building toward a breaking point?
The truth is, being human is kind of like being a leaf in the wind — we are buffeted this way and that by the winds of fate. And we are helpless to change or avoid much of it.
And we hate this, right? Don’t we try our best to take control of our lives, to put everything in order so that we can have some semblance of routine and consistency?
The problem is, we’re fighting a losing battle. Our power to control the world is limited and far less than we’d like it to be.
What if there was another perspective to take?
What if, instead of hating the forces that push us every which way, we welcomed them in?
