Life Just Keeps On Lifeing

The first time I heard this statement, I laughed. every one of us has their own wants and needs. We get frustrated when things don’t go the way we want them to. We get angry, sad, overwhelmed, just plain not in agreement with the “reality” around us. We keep fighting it as though this is somehow going to change it. Any emotion we put into it intensifies our own desire, which intensifies our obsession with it. When we are young and we have a crush on someone, this is a perfect example. Everything revolves around that person liking us back and if they don’t, we are crushed. (I guess that’s why they call it a crush!) This is what we do almost daily. There’s some thing that we want to happen in a certain way, Maybe we want that promotion at the office, maybe we hope that our partner will ask us to marry them, maybe we are wanting that business proposal or that new house or new car… there are so many things. Few of us search for peace. We are in a constant state of extreme desire for something or someone. I’ve heard it said that Buddha exclaimed “Life is suffering”, and this is why. Until we stop begging for a miracle and begin to breathe into this moment, there will be no peace for us. In Taoism, all that happens to or around us, simply is the fact of what is happening. It is an event within a time cycle of action. Much like the seasonal shifts, there are human cycles as well. They are set off in varying ways. People like to think of it as karma yet that is a limited and incorrect understanding. Situations do not happen to punish us for an action taken or not taken, instead, our actions set off cycles of different responses that can happen in the environment. The I Ching breaks down each of the varying responses that can happen within any given cycle. What does this mean for us? It means that until we detach from our own desires, we will continuously jump into the cycle of obsession. We will never be at peace until we do this. We may feel calm, but our desire for something or someone will again pop up. I have found that by speaking a simple phrase of ”It is what it is”, my desires have generally remained more in check. This phrase is not to be approached with an exasperated, giving up Mindset, but instead, with a factual realization about it. We can think of the seasons and know that ”It is what it is” right now, and, just like the seasons, it will change when time has cycled it to its next action cycle.

-Janice M. Burke

Image by NASA Hubble Telescope