#renunciation
Some stuff I wrote about dealing with smartphones and the internet. It’s just so difficult to pay attention to anything lately. Not only has my attention span gotten shorter, but I seem to always have this feeling that I could or even should be doing something better.
There’s a line in a poem of mine that says “everything in this world has the capacity to fill all the space that you’re willing to give it” and I think that for the most part of our lives we’re not willing to give our experiences any space at all. We’re not willing to surrender to anything because we’re constantly lost in thoughts about the past, the future and all the other ways that the present moment could be. And this way of living just makes us feel numb and unsatisfied.
In a way, we have to renunciate all the lives we could be living so we can live the one we actually have. And I’m starting to believe that this very act of renunciation can be a path for us to love this life we have and engage with it in a better way.
The Five Remembrances
“There are these five facts that one should reflect on often, whether one is a woman or a man, lay or ordained. Which five?
- I am subject to aging, have not gone beyond aging.’ This is the first fact that one should reflect on often.…
- I am subject to illness, have not gone beyond illness’.…
- I am subject to death, have not gone beyond death’.…
- I will grow different, separate from all that is dear & appealing to me’.…
- I am the owner of actions [karma], heir to actions, born of actions, related through actions, and have actions as my arbitrator. Whatever I do, for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir’.…”
No matter who you are, these five facts, one should become deeply familiar with/reflect on. - Buddha, in the “Upajjhatthana Sutta”
Today is Chotrul Düchen — one of the four major Buddhist days of the year.
These first fifteen days of the new Lunar year commemorate the event when The Buddha performed a different miracle each day to instill devotion and increase merit among heretics.
Serenity follows renunciation.
