Just to Be Alive is Enough!
Here we go with another video. I still don’t have the courage to try to completely ad-lib one of these yet, so I’m using a script so I don’t mess up and do a lot of “uhs” while I’m recording. Hope it’s alright. If you don’t want to watch the video, I’ve copied the script below so you can read it.
Have a great and peaceful day — and here goes ….
Just to Be Alive is Enough!
Just to Be Alive is Enough!
Many of you who may have been following one or the other of my blogs, know how much I advocate for peace. Peace has been a passion in my life for many years — let’s see — I’ve been on the search for peace on earth — and peace in the home — and that wonderful inner peace — for over 50 years now.
In the early 1950′s — during the Korean War, I learned that violence was not the way to solve any problem. And, even to this day, I’m a believer in the old song, “Let There Be Peace on Earth, and Let It Begin With Me”.
Now that I’ve reached the mid-point of being in my 70s, I’ve also learned another powerful bit of knowledge — and that is this, — “There is no greater gift — (other than world peace)– than to be grateful for our lives”. There’s another gift that goes right along with being grateful — gratitude leads naturally to generosity because we want to share this gift with others.
So, in today’s video, I would like to do a bit of this sharing with you.
One of the teachings of Buddha (I do follow a Buddhist lifestyle) is about impermanence — It’s this — There is nothing that is permanent — nothing. One example which is most prominent in my life is that I know I’m going to die — everyone will. There is a teaching in Buddhism which says, “Death is certain. The time of death is uncertain.” Since we never know when the time will come, it only makes good sense to reach some understanding of how to live a life we know will end at some point. As I grow my wisdom of this it only makes sense to devote my Buddhist practice to gratitude.
As an integral part of this practice we learn there is nothing we need to get that is not already, right here, right now, at this very moment, in this body and this mind as it is. What a gift this is! Not only is life a gift — and our Buddhist practice a gift — everything we have, without exception, has come to us through the kindness of others.
When I lived in Vermont, I spent some time with one of the Buddhist teachers who lived there. She taught her students a meditation to cultivate gratitude. She asked us to think of everything we thought of as ours, and to consider how these things came to us. Our food, our clothing, our homes, books, tools, our health — she taught us how everything we can think of comes to us through the kindness of others. Even something we may have made with our own hands depends on the tools and materials we used to make it.
And we, through the activities of our lives, are also offering gifts to others. It’s sort of like a dance of giving and receiving which goes on continually. Gratitude and generosity generate each other.
I’d like to end today’s video with this wonderful poem by one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver. It’s called, “Summer Day”.
“Who made the world?
Who made the swan and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down –
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open and floats away.
I don’t exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”
Be well — Be in peace,
Ron Rink
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Have a peaceful day!
Shanti … (A sanscrit word meaning, “Let there be Peace. Peace, beautiful Peace. Peace within, Peace without. Peace in this world. Peace for all beings.”)
Ron Rink
http://www.buddhistbelief.com
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