We all have a
new week in our lives, and we hope that you're able
to make
the
absolute most of the week that you've been given,
and the people and the
opportunities that come with it. Take good
care, and enjoy this week in your life!
There are turtles that live to be three or four hundred years old, and redwood trees that live more than a thousand years. Our own life span is only about a hundred years at most. How are we living those years? Are we making the most of our days? What are we here to realize or to accomplish?
Later, we may look back and wonder, “What have I done with my life?” Time goes by so quickly. Death comes unexpectedly. How can we bargain with it? To wait until tomorrow is too late. We all want to live deeply so our lives are not wasted and when death comes we won’t have any regrets.
When we are fully established in the present moment, we know that we are alive, and that it’s a miracle to be alive. The past has gone, and the future has not yet come. This is the only moment where we can be alive, and we have it!
We have to make this present moment into the most wonderful moment of our life. Contemplating impermanence helps us touch freedom and happiness in the present moment. It helps us see reality as it is, so we can embrace change, face our fears, and cherish what we have. When we can see the impermanent nature of a flower, a pebble, the person we love, our own body, our pain and sorrow, or even a situation, we can make a breakthrough into the heart of reality.
Impermanence is something wonderful. If things were not impermanent, life would not be possible.
A seed could never become a plant of corn; the child couldn’t grow into a young adult; there could never be healing and transformation; we could never realize our dreams. So impermanence is very important for life. Thanks to impermanence, everything is possible.
WE’LL SEE, WE’LL SEE
There’s an old story from China about Mr. Ly, a rural villager whose livelihood depended on his horse. One day his horse ran away, and all his neighbors took pity on him: “How unlucky you are! What misfortune!” But Mr. Ly was not anxious. “We’ll see,” he said. “We’ll see.” A few days later his horse returned, bringing several wild horses back with it. Mr Ly and his family were suddenly very wealthy. “How lucky you are!” exclaimed the other villagers.
“We’ll see,” replied Mr. Ly. “We’ll see.” Then one day his only son was training one of the new wild horses and he fell off and broke his leg. “What misfortune!” declared the neighbors again. “We’ll see,” said Mr. Ly. “We’ll see.”
A few weeks later the imperial army passed through the village, to conscript all able-bodied young men into the military. They did not take away Mr. Ly’s son, who was still recovering from his broken leg. “How lucky you are!” said his neighbors again. “We’ll see,” replied Mr. Ly. “We’ll see.”
Impermanence is just as capable of bringing about happiness as it is of bringing about suffering. Impermanence is not bad news. Because of impermanence, despotic regimes are subject to fall. Because of impermanence, illness can be cured. Thanks to impermanence, we can enjoy the wonder of the four beautiful seasons. Thanks to impermanence, anything can change and transform in a more positive direction.
There were times during the war in Vietnam when it seemed the violence would never end. Our teams of young social workers labored tirelessly to rebuild villages that had been destroyed by bombs. So many people lost their homes. There was one village near the demilitarized zone that we had to rebuild not only one but two and even three times after repeated bombings. The young people asked, “Should we rebuild? Or should we give up?” Luckily, we were wise enough not to give up. To give up would be to give up on hope.
I remember that about this time a group of young people came to me and asked, “Dear teacher, do you think the war will end soon?” At that point, I could not see any sign of the war ending. But I did not want us to drown in despair. I stayed silent for some time. Finally, I said, “Dear friends, the Buddha said that everything is impermanent. The war has to end one day.” The question is, what can we do to accelerate the impermanence? There are
always things we can do each day to help the situation.
THE POWER OF INSIGHT
We may agree with the truth of impermanence, and yet we still behave as though everything is permanent, and that is the problem. This is what prevents us from taking the opportunities available to us right now to act to change a situation, or to bring happiness to ourselves and others. With the insight of impermanence, you won’t wait. You’ll do everything you can to make a difference, to make the person you love happy, and to live the kind of life you would like to live.
The Buddha offered the contemplation on impermanence not for us to treasure as a notion, but for us to get the insight of impermanence by applying it to our daily life. There’s a difference between a notion and an insight.
Say we strike a match to get a flame. As soon as the flame manifests, it begins to consume the match. The notion of impermanence is like the match, and the insight of impermanence is like the flame. As the flame manifests, it consumes the match, which we don’t need anymore. What we need is the flame, not the match. We’re making use of the notion of impermanence to get the insight of impermanence.
We can make the insight of impermanence into a living insight that is with us in every moment.
The insight of impermanence has the power to liberate us. Suppose someone you love
has just said something that has made you angry, and you want to punish them by saying something unkind back. He has dared to make you suffer, and you want to lash back and make him suffer too. You are about to start an argument. But then you remember to close your eyes and contemplate impermanence. You imagine your beloved three hundred years from now. He will be nothing but ash. It may not take three hundred years; perhaps within thirty or fifty years you will both be ash. You suddenly realize how foolish it is to be angry and to argue with each other. Life is so precious. It takes only a few seconds of concentration to recognize and touch your nature of impermanence. The insight of impermanence burns away the anger. And when you open your eyes, you don’t want to argue anymore. You just want to hold him in your arms. Your anger has transformed into love.
A nice song
to enjoy (from more than fifty years ago!):
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Warning:
This excerpt contains graphic descriptions of the
results of a car accident that could be disturbing to
some.
We’d left the restaurant, and our friends, behind.
It was just the two of us now. My girlfriend, tired from the evening’s events, was dozing in the passenger seat.
Not me. I was wide-awake—eyes glued to the road in front, waving my finger in the air like a baton as I quietly conducted the melodies of Tchaikovsky.
Still in a state of euphoria from the night’s events, sleep was the furthest thing from my mind.
Rocketing down the freeway at 70 miles per hour in my brand new white Ford Mustang, I was only two hours removed from giving the best speech of my life.
I had received my first standing ovation, and I was elated.
In fact, I desperately wanted to shout out my feelings of gratitude to anyone that would listen, but my girlfriend was asleep, so
she wasn't able to help. I considered calling Mom and Dad, but it was late; they might already be in bed.
Should’ve called. But I simply had no way of knowing that moment would be my last opportunity to speak to my parents—or anyone—for quite some time.
An Unimaginable Reality
No, I don’t recall seeing the headlights of a massive Chevrolet truck coming directly at me.
But they were. In an instant of perverse fate, the full-size Chevy pickup, traveling at an estimated 80 miles per hour, smashed head on into my undersized, and under-matched Ford Mustang.
The following seconds played out in slow motion, Tchaikovsky’s commanding melodies orchestrating our wicked dance.
The metal frames of our two vehicles collided—screaming and screeching as they twisted and broke.
The Mustang’s airbags exploded with enough force to render us unconscious.
My brain, still traveling at seventy miles-per-hour, smashed into the front of my skull, destroying much of the vital brain tissue that made up my frontal lobe.
Upon impact, the tail end of my Mustang was shoved into the lane on my right, making my driver’s-side door an unavoidable target for the car behind me.
A Saturn sedan, driven by a 16-year-old, crashed into my door at 70 miles per hour.
The door collapsed into the left side of my body. The frame of the metal roof caved in on my head, slicing open my skull and nearly severing my left ear.
The bones of my left eye socket were crushed, leaving my left eyeball dangerously unsupported.
My left arm broke, severing the radial nerve in my forearm and shattering my elbow, while my fractured humerus bone pierced the skin behind my bicep.
My pelvis was given the impossible task of separating the Saturn’s front end from my
car’s center console, and failed. It fractured in three separate places.
Finally, my femur—the largest bone in the human body—snapped in half, and one end speared through the skin of my thigh and tore a hole in my black dress slacks.
Blood was everywhere. My body was destroyed.
My brain was permanently damaged.
Unable to withstand the immense physical pain, my body shut down, my blood pressure dropped, and everything went black as I plunged into a coma.
You Only
Live. . . Twice?
What happened next was nothing short of incredible—what many have called a miracle.
The emergency rescue teams arrived, and, using the jaws of life, firefighters cut my bloody body from the wreckage.
When they did, I bled out. My heart stopped beating.
I stopped breathing.
Clinically, I was dead.
The paramedics immediately put me on the rescue helicopter and worked determinedly to save my life.
Six minutes later, they succeeded. My heart started to beat again.
I breathed clean oxygen. Thankfully, I was alive.
I spent six days in a coma, and woke to the news that I might never walk again.
After seven challenging weeks of recovery and rehabilitation in the hospital, learning to walk all over again, I was released to my parents’ care—back into the real world.
With 11 fractured bones, permanent brain damage, and a now ex-girlfriend who broke up with me in the hospital, life as I knew it, would never be the same.
Believe it or not, this would turn out to be a good thing.
While coming to grips with my new reality wasn’t easy, and at times I couldn’t help but wonder—why did this happen to me?—I had to take responsibility for getting my life back.
Instead of complaining about how things should be, I embraced how things were.
I stopped putting energy into wishing my life were any different—into wishing bad things didn’t happen to me—and instead focused 100% on making the best of what I had.
Since I couldn’t change the past, I focused on moving forward.
I dedicated my life to fulfilling my potential and achieving my dreams so I could discover how to empower others to do the same.
And, as a result of choosing to be genuinely grateful for all that I had, unconditionally accepting of all that I didn’t, and accepting total responsibility for creating all that I wanted, this potentially devastating car accident ultimately became one of the best things that ever happened to me.
Hinging on my belief that everything happens for a reason—but that it is our responsibility to choose the most empowering reasons for the challenges, events and circumstances of our lives—I used my accident to fuel a triumphant comeback.
Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement. Our
articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do
we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live
life. Take
from them what you will, and disagree with
whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you
each week.
The world can be harsh and negative, but if we remain
generous and patient,
kindness inevitably reveals itself. Something deep in the human soul
seems
to depend on the presence of kindness; something instinctive in us expects
it,
and once we sense it we are able to trust and open ourselves.
John O'Donohue
Learning
I sincerely hope that I never stop learning until the day I
die--and who knows what will happen from there on? More
importantly, though, I hope that I never learn the desire to
learn, and to actively seek out situations that will help me to do
so. I definitely do not want to be a person who keeps doing
things the same way just because I've always done them that
way--that would be very similar to being dead for me, for then I
would be stagnating without any growth or development at all in my
life.
Because of our experience in public schools, unfortunately, most
of us view learning as a passive activity--somebody tells us some
information, and we "learn" it.
Unfortunately, though, learning is actually an active
process that we truly have to pursue if we're going to come
anywhere close to actually reaching our learning potential.
The good news is that learning is actually pretty easy--we've been
doing it since infancy--and there are plenty of worthwhile and
fascinating fields in the world about which we can learn an almost
unlimited amount.
One of our most important decisions, though, is whether we want to
learn only information, which involves memorization and which
allows us only to repeat information, or we want to learn more
productive ways of thinking critically and processes that will
allow us to do many things other than spewing forth information
and random facts.
Learning
is not attained by chance. It must be sought
for with ardor
and attended to with diligence.
Abigail
Adams
No matter what
we want to learn, we are blessed to be living in an
era in which learning is possible at almost any
level on almost any subject. We have libraries
full of books and an Internet and foundations
developed for certain fields and an incredible
communications web available whenever we decide to
use them. There are more college courses
available on more subjects than we could ever really
count. Unfortunately, as the availability of
learning opportunities increases, it seems that the
number of excuses for not learning also rises.
We can learn only if we wish to learn, and only if
we put ourselves into situations in which we can
learn. If we continue to do the same things in
the same ways, over and over again, then we can't
expect much learning to happen at all. As a
teacher, I witness many students who come to class
unwilling and not ready to learn--they think the
ways they do things already are fine, and they don't
see or feel any need to change anything they
do. These are people who will stay at the same
level in pretty much everything they do, never
growing past their current levels of knowledge and
ability--and this is a shame, for they're ensuring
that they never reach the amazing potential that
they have.
You know that I don't
believe that anyone has ever taught anything
to anyone. I question the efficacy of teaching. The only thing
that I know is that anyone who wants to learn will learn. And maybe
a teacher is a facilitator, a person who puts things down and shows
people how exciting and wonderful it is and asks them to eat.
Carl Rogers
Another problem
that we have with learning, though, is that we seem
to assume that we learn naturally if we're in the
right situations. Learning, though, usually
takes work, and it often takes a systematic effort
that most people haven't learned how to apply.
It's a process of paying attention to what we want
to learn, and then finding ways to internalize that
information so that we don't simply forget it.
We all have the potential to learn, but not all of
us have the tools available to do so, for we either
haven't been exposed to those tools, or we didn't
pay much attention when they were introduced to us.
In many ways, our school systems hurt our learning
abilities more that they help them. We've set
up a system that for many young people is a social
experience rather than an educational one, and one
that often relies on the punishment of bad grades as
a threat to "encourage" learning. We
don't tend to teach effective study skills there,
nor do we help young people to develop the intrinsic
motivation necessary to be successful and effective
learners. Our school systems also regularly
assume that everyone can learn the same material in
the same way, and really, nothing could be further
from the truth. We each learn effectively in
our own individual ways, and many of us are turned
off of learning because of our "failures"
in learning in ways that someone else has determined
that we should learn.
But no matter what school did to us or for us, we
always have the opportunity to redirect ourselves
and our efforts towards more effective learning in
areas that truly interest us--but we have to want to
do so if we're going to learn.
Place
yourself among those who carry on their lives with passion,
and true learning will take place, no matter how humble or
exalted the setting. But no matter what path you follow, do
not be ashamed of your learning. In some corner of your life,
you know more about something than anyone else on earth.
The true measure of your education is not what you know,
but how you share what you know with others.
Our ability to
learn new things and new ideas and new information
is one of the greatest gifts involved with being
human. It's a tragedy that so many people
choose not to learn because they're afraid that they
may find out that what they know already hasn't
necessarily been right. They choose instead to
hold on to their mistaken beliefs and ideas, afraid
to let them go and move on to new knowledge and new
ways of seeing and doing things. If we're ever
to reach our potential as human beings and as a
race, we must make learning one of the highest
priorities of our lives, and we must allow people to
learn what they will in the ways that they learn
most effectively themselves.
Learn today, and enrich your life. It doesn't
matter what you learn, just be sure that you allow
something new into your thoughts and your knowledge
base. If you're looking to make your life
richer and fuller and more fulfilling, then actively
pursuing learning is one of the most effective ways
of expanding your perspective, your tolerance, your
compassion, your understanding, your love, and your
life.
The
great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously
as possible,
to groom one's curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb
aboard,
and gallop over the thick, sunstruck hills every day. . . . It
began as mystery,
and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful
country lies in between.
To
"let go" does not mean to stop caring.
It means I can't do it for someone else.
To
"let go" is not to cut myself off.
It's the realization that I can't control another.
To
"let go" is to admit powerlessness,
which means the
outcome is not in my hands.
To
"let go" is not to try to change or blame another.
It's to make the most of myself.
To
"let go" is not to care for, but to care about.
To
"let go" is not to fix, but to be supportive.
To
"let go" is not to judge, but to allow another to be a
human being.
To
"let go" is not to be in the middle, arranging all the
outcomes,
but to allow others to affect their own destinies.
To
"let go" is not to deny, but to accept.
To
"let go" is not to nag, scold, or argue, but instead
to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.
To
"let go" is not to adjust everything to my desires,
but to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it.
To
"let go" is not to regret the past, but to grow and live
for the future.
To
"let go" is to fear less and to love more.
(from his book Thoughts of the dreampoet : vol. 1.)
Most
people are just trying to get through the day.Be committed
to learn to get
from the day.Don’t just get through it; get from it.
Learn from it.Let the
day teach you.Join the university of life.
What a difference that will make
in your future.Commit yourself
to learning.Commit yourself to absorbing.
Be like a sponge.
Get it.Don’t miss it.
Yes, life
can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's
actually rather dependable and reliable. Some principles apply
to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called
universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use
them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever
learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning. I use it a lot when I
teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to
the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.
What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or
generous, compassionate or arrogant? In this book, I've done my
best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life,
writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.
Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too! Universal Principles of Living Life Fully. Awareness of
these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration
out of the lives we lead.
Explore all of our
quotations pages--these links will take you to the first page of each
topic, and those pages will contain links to any additional pages on
the same topic.
™
