Of course not.
There's this idea that if we're on a spiritual path,
No one should ever be unkind to us.
We should never experience discomfort in the body.
No one should ever take advantage of us.
No,
Of course not.
The difference is our response to it because we understand.
The wisdom is understanding this is the world we live in.
To stop fighting back and imagining that I should only ever experience pleasant conditions.
And that is the,
I mean that's the ego,
Right?
That's the ego.
It always wants the praise,
It never wants the criticism,
Always wants to win,
It never wants to lose,
It always wants the comfort,
Never wants the discomfort,
Right?
There's no wisdom in that.
There's no wisdom in any of that.
It's the understanding that this is the world that we live in.
We are trying to live in reality,
To come out of this thought-created world that really this such naive thought-created world,
This childish thought-created world that we live in that only wants the good and never wants the bad.
If you were praised every day and never criticized,
It would mean nothing to you after a while.
Nothing.
If you only ever won and never lost,
It would mean nothing.
It's how we experience the world,
It's why we can appreciate the good moments.
And when the moments are unpleasant,
Just to remember this won't last either.
This won't last either.
It's okay.
Right?
It's going to fit,
It's going to pass,
Right?
It's how we experience the world.
If we only,
We could not,
There would be nothing to experience if it were just one thing.
We need the contrast in order to experience the world.
And out of,
Even out of that which we perceive as bad and that which we perceive as good,
It's not one thing,
Right?
Out of tragedies,
People step up and do amazing things.
And even just that sense of connection,
That sense of we're all in this together all of a sudden.
I can remember in the States after 9-11,
This sense of just all of a sudden we were all in it together.
A tragedy,
Right?
Or just even the tragedies that,
There is a story from after the tsunamis in 2004 in Thailand.
Thailand and,
Oh my gosh,
I'm going to forget.
I think Indonesia,
I can't remember the other countries,
But Southeastern,
Southern Asia.
And of course,
The tsunami wiped out villages,
I mean,
Just wiped out entire villages.
And there was this man who had lost all of his family,
All of his children,
His wife.
And of course,
I mean,
A tragedy.
I mean,
You can imagine the grief,
The suffering that this man is going through.
And then somehow he,
I don't remember the exact details,
But he'd come across all of these orphaned children because all of their parents,
I think,
Were in this field and they all got wiped out,
All died.
And he started adopting the kids.
And then he ended up with,
Last count,
Last I read this story was probably maybe five or six years ago.
I think he had 30-something kids that he had adopted.
And in this interview,
He said,
You know,
I would never ask for what happened.
Like,
I love my family and I miss them every day,
Of course,
But I would have never known this love that I have right now from adopting all of these kids.
So even in tragedies,
In tragedies,
There's amazing things that happen,
But we look at it in such a binary way,
Right?
And I think there's so much wisdom and compassion in saying,
Well,
Let's see.
People step up in amazing ways in tragedies as well.
So even just to think of this kind of,
When people say,
Well,
Why is there,
You know,
Or good or evil or just good or bad,
It's like,
It's such a binary,
Such a simplistic way to look at the world.
I mean,
You would never ask for these bad things to happen,
Of course,
But the reality is that they do.
And then there are some extraordinary things.
We often dig so deep in extraordinary ways in extraordinary circumstances.
So yeah,
This is,
We are trying to live in accord with reality,
Not to change reality out there,
To be in accord with it,
To find peace and harmony within and peace and harmony with the external world,
That even in the tragedies to say,
Ah,
But let's keep looking what else is happening here.
It's not one thing and it's always changing.
This is,
This is a ride.
You are the ride.
We're trying to stop fighting the ride,
Enjoy it all,
Experience it all.
Be here,
Be present because that's where these extraordinary moments come from when we really do,
We step up in ways that we could have never imagined.
So don't hesitate as well.
So many times we hesitate where we see someone,
The person at the subway station that someone falls on the train tracks and someone,
Someone jumps in and gets them,
Right?
There's always the story.
Someone jumps in and pulls them out and they're interviewed afterwards.
What were you thinking?
And they go,
I wasn't thinking of anything.
I mean,
You see in that moment,
There is a seeing of the shared connection that pushes someone to risk their own lives for a complete stranger.
And if you were to ask all the other people on the subway platform that didn't ask,
What were you thinking?
Oh,
I was thinking about whether I could even get down there and back in time.
Could I lift them up that I've got to be somewhere in a little while,
I can't be late.
Only one person leaves the subway platform that day without regret.
The person that acted out of extraordinary moments,
We act in extraordinary ways.
We should not view these moments so simplistically,
So naively to say,
Well,
It's just one thing.
It's not one thing.
It's never one thing.
That's the teaching of emptiness.
Emptiness,
The great Mahayana Buddhist teaching,
Emptiness does not mean voidness,
Does not mean nothingness.
It means not one thing.
Not one thing.
I mean,
Just to look at what… Thich Nhat Hanh uses the example of the flower.
When you look at the flower,
There's the sun,
There's the rain,
There's the clouds,
There's the worms,
There's the bacteria,
There's the cow manure,
All of those things,
That's the flower.
And in our own lives,
When we even look back on our own lives,
When we look back at the times that were so challenging,
So difficult,
Something got birthed out of there.
Something was born out of there that maybe pushed us on a spiritual path,
That had a friend,
Rosa,
You know,
Your friend said,
Ah,
You're going through something,
Download insight time or start meditating,
Right?
Look at the whole thing.
Look at the whole thing.
If we look at the world in a binary way,
We are missing so much.
Of course,
For all those people that are suffering,
The people in the Middle East,
In the Ukraine,
In Africa,
I mean,
Just so many places where people are suffering,
Compassion,
Practice compassion,
Practice tonglen,
My favorite compassion practice.
Because we need to be able to move towards pain and suffering as well,
Because in our ability to look at someone's pain and suffering,
To move closer to it,
And in tonglen meditation,
Not just to move closer to it,
But taking on the pain and suffering of others and transforming it,
We are transforming ourselves.
It's not one thing.
It's not one thing.
