Another good night, with lots of dreams. I remember waking up and looking at the clock at 4 something, then going straight back to sleep, and when I looked at the clock again, it was 6:13.
It’s tempting to say ‘it won’t last’. How can I turn that around, to say, ‘enjoy it while you can’? The counsellor on Thursday asked, do I ever think ‘It won’t last’ about the bad times? And of course I don’t, not really. ‘This too must pass’. Where does that line come from? It sounds like an oracle.
The secret of life, the ‘ultimate answer’, has to be something like that. Like the great god’s message to his creation : ‘We apologise for the inconvenience’ (‘So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish’, Douglas Adams). Or the four noble truths. Something so simple and banal, on one level, that it’s overlooked, that it has to keep being reiterated. That we start again, every day that we move forward from this point, that we keep trying.
We all want to have a clever answer, something which will help us to bypass all that stuff, a magic bullet. But maybe this is it. Just that you get up every morning and get on with it. And if you’ve tried it a million times before and it hasn’t worked, but you know in your heart it’s the right thing, you try again.
AH, BUT – (there’s always an ‘ah but’) – how do you know it’s the ‘right thing’? Maybe you ARE just bashing your head against a wall, trying and trying and trying and never getting anywhere. All you have to follow is your instinct. Joseph Campbell said: ‘Follow your bliss’. But that could mean anything. Where is the Tao? It is here and nowhere.
All this is just patterns our human consciousness tries to impose on a random universe. Except that the universe is not entirely random of course, and neither is human consciousness. There are patterns, but patterns which are never laid down in stone. As in Godel’s theorem, there cannot exist a set which has no exceptions, including this one. (I’m paraphrasing there, and have probably got it completely wrong, it’s a long time since I read this stuff). All generalisations are false, including this one. All systems contain their own contradictions.
Enough philosophising. It’s a beautiful morning, and the cats want feeding.
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This too will pass
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‘This too must pass’
Not sure if they are exact words but I think it may have been Christ at some point during the Passion - it's a wile since I've been to church or read the New Testament...
| suzeemoon [Member] http://suzeemoon.friendpages.com/ 2006-10-07 @ 12:19 |
couldn't resist a little search - if only life were that simple! 
The origin of the saying "this too shall pass" appears to date back to a story told about King Solomon. It is said that the King, feeling blue, asked his advisors to find him a ring he had seen in a dream. "When I feel satisfied I’m afraid that it won’t last. And when I don’t, I am afraid my sorrow will go on forever. Find me the ring that will ease my suffering." Eventually an advisor met an old jeweler who carved into a simple gold band the Hebrew inscription "gam zeh ya’avor" – "this too shall pass." When the king received his ring and read the inscription his sorrows turned to joy and his joy to sorrows, and then both gave way to equanimity. More recently the saying has been popularized in the West by spiritual leaders imported from or inspired by the East, including Ram Dass, the Dali Lama and Tich Nhat Hanh.
| husbandorcat [Member] 2006-10-07 @ 12:58 |
I have a suspiscion that story is also told about the Buddha - which would make sense, as 'equanimity' is a very Buddhist concept.
Or maybe the story is that the Buddha told that story about someone else...
Whatever, when you come down to it the roots of wisdom are very deeply entwined - there are only so many ways of explaining the human condition - but maybe an infinity of ways of experiencing it..
How's that for pretentious?????
| corioboria [Member] http://www.healthworx.co.uk 2006-10-10 @ 12:11 |
Whoever said it they were wise words. I wish I could have just one original profound thought like that before I die, and then maybe future generations of bloggers would remember me
| KandAmoist [Member] 2006-10-16 @ 16:58 |
Now this is an improvement! You started with a positive (a good night's sleep) and ended with one (a beautiful morning). All you need to work on now is cutting out the gloomy stuff in between and you'll be sorted. "Accen-tuate the positive, elim-inate the negative". AND whatever you do, "Don't mess with Mr Inbetween"
| CassandraofTroy [Member] 2006-10-23 @ 08:43 |
I suspect all the truly wise things have already been said, probably several times over, things like: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do to you’, which seems like a pretty good basis for an ethical system to me. But it is up to us to learn from them and make them real in our own lives.
The one that really speaks to me is the First Noble Truth of Buddhism, which is ‘Suffering exists’. I believe it’s only by acknowledging this and truly taking it on board that we can accept that this is the way the world is and move forward. This seems to me far more positive and constructive than pretending that ‘all is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds’. Actually, of course, this IS the best of all possible worlds, in that it is the ONLY world we have, and it is up to us to make it as good as it possibly can be – which we cannot do, either on an ethical or a personal level, by simply ignoring suffering and pretending it isn’t there.
| GoingSomewhere [Member] 2006-10-25 @ 20:21 |
"Enjoy it while you can" - I think we should strive for that - to enjoy the moment. There are many challenges in life, and it is up to us how we deal with them within the constraints of our own being. I think you're starting to get there.
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