These past few weeks have been hard ones for people in my friendship circle and in the community. A young person with friends and family dies in despair. An older person passes away surrounded by family, to be followed by an older woman with a terminal illness. Some deaths are shocking and painful and out of time. Others are within the realm of expectation and yet still wrenching. Close friends, acquaintances, strangers struggling with illnesses, disruption, death.
It is worth noting that these things happen all the time - somewhere, to someone. But the stresses of the last two months have been of an order considerably larger than we have known, and certainly larger than we were anticipating.
And stresses will find our weaknesses and play on them - perhaps adding just that feather weight to the tipping point already teetering.
At the same time, the holiday season is full upon us. Sparkling lights at the Newport Cottages enthrall the freezing visitors who wander the grounds and amaze the inside guests who take pictures of the 12 foot high poinsettia tree and red carpeted marble staircases lined with white poinsettias and holly garlands.
The holidays have their own stresses as families get together in harmony - or not - while others look forward to loneliness and want - and every combination in between.
The first noble truth tells us suffering exists.
But we, as practitioners of mindfulness and meditation, have practiced - often for years - to give ourselves the tools and habits of resilience and balance. The tale of the two arrows tells us that the first arrow pierces our vulnerable bodies but the second arrow invades our minds with fear of the pain, of the outcome, of the causes, of the consequences. And our charge to ourselves is to work with the second arrow, the arrow of how we relate to the first arrow.
There will be the suffering. Our human existence is heir to these sufferings. The Buddha himself was familiar with these misfortunes.
How we relate makes all the difference. Do we react? Blindly lashing out, freezing up, frantically rushing to push away? Or can we stop, breathe, take a moment and then respond with our best, most centered selves? Can we build a refuge in our minds of patience, clear seeing, and gratitude? Can we nourish kindness, compassion, joy for others and for ourselves, and equanimity? These are qualities we can practice, develop and count on to help us weather the inevitable whirlwinds of living.
Our goal is not to insulate ourselves so that we are blocking out and avoiding suffering, insulating ourselves from life. That doesn’t work.
Rather we seek patience to endure what we can’t change, contentment with our lives just as they are, insight to see the impermanence of suffering as well as that of good fortune.
So can we allow the suffering and understand that this too is part of life? Can we see the unfolding of life as just that, an unfolding? We are not making it happen and our ability to alter it is limited. We protect ourselves and others as best we can. And then we say “yes” to the unfolding, allowing and accepting.
Our practice is our refuge and our path to equanimity.