Foto de Eliane Fonseca.
Tree trunk at my mother's garden - no effects used
Foto de Christian
Breathe and feel the breeze, watch the leaves shaking outside and forget for a moment the world is falling apart (one world, a few worlds, millions of worlds?). Accept for a moment things won't be the way you would like them to be, not even on the lowest tolerable level, not always and maybe not ever for a sufficient amount of time. There must be a reason. One day you might understand, perhaps it will take 800 lives. It is never an isolated issue; millions of others go trough very similar situations moment by moment. There must be a meaning for all this. Treasure your tears, when they are true. Look for the truth on everything. Suffering seems to be an unquestionable truth. The rules are never clear. Some things just don't stop, no matter how much you try, no matter how far you reach. Just breathe and look outside for a moment, be here, now and keep asking God for you to accept the things you cannot change, courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Compassion alone is never sufficient.
When there is all this love inside, it's all love and it's all about love. When I breathe: love. When I cry: love. All around and on everything. But it's not goodness, no. It's something beyond that, that includes everything and makes everything like nothing, so light and spontaneous. You breathe, and that's all.
"If you want to learn theory,
Man's Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl is a book that makes me want to change all the questions and to finally be able to stop looking for a meaning. To face that the questions come from life itself, every moment, asking things of you. Well, then this famous quote "When you find the answers, the questions change..." would have to be rearranged as to say; the question is always the same; the answer, never.
You think back, things that happened in your life. Some you wish never ended, some you wish never happened. And it feels that now is just a brief something, quite unreal and uncertain, and the future seems big, sometimes bright, sometimes dark. Now is the only existing moment. No other day can be so real. And what are you? You are now, nothing else. You might think that you are now a consequence of yesterday and a preparation for tomorrow. But now, only now, you are free to be whatever you want. Maybe that is free will. Maybe that is what meditation is all about, to train your mind to be here and now, and with that, to gain freedom to the mind, to dissolve vicious connections. We are not our minds or our bodies but everything; we are the creators and receptors. Let’s make magic.
"A sede que temos de nos exteriorizar – a necessidade de satisfação por meio de uma ação exterior a nós e, portanto, contra o que a plenitude realmente implica – continua em nós. Todos a temos ; ela é a raiz de todas as nossas misérias. Porém ela nunca é satisfeita, a não ser que dê as costas a si mesma, volte-se para o interior – ao invés de para o exterior – e alcance a plenitude. Assim, o próprio cessar dessa ânsia por exteriorização é prova de que alcançamos a plenitude. Se a pessoa não alcançar a plenitude, essa ânsia nunca passa. Seu objetivo pode mudar, mas o fogo nunca é extinto, exceto por meio da proximidade do Sagrado que a plenitude implica. "
It's over, unfortunately. He could have written so much more I feel. It was as if he was tired, or maybe he would continue in a separate book but never had the chance for he died the year after Brothers Karamazov was finished. I really wish I knew what happened to Ivan...he filled me with even more questions but gave no answers. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was in prison in Siberia himself for several years, where he began to suffer from epilepsy. "His prison experiences coupled with his conversion to a conservative and profoundly religious philosophy formed the basis for his great novels." His brutal father was murdered by his serfs, strangled by vodka.
"A idéia de que podemos melhorar a nossa vida, em profundidade, sem mudar nossa maneira de ser, é uma fantasia, somente passível de ocorrer a quem desconheça o que são os samskáras e vásanas. Mudar significa, basicamente, atingir aquele patamar superior de compreensão a partir do qual podemos discernir (viveka) quais são os vásanas negativos que, a partir do subconsciente, governam nosso comportamento. Cabe-nos transformá-los, desenvolvendo, em nosso íntimo, qualidades, hábitos e comportamentos opostos àqueles."
It took me some courage to get back to Brothers Karamazov, for I have a copy in my computer only. Well, screen reading here I go. I’m almost half way trough and loving Dostoyevsky for every word, specially the discussions on religion. Makes me feel less lonely in all my questioning...so much questioning. It is clear that anger brings no solutions, on the contrary. However, knowing does not prevent me from feeling it. What do I do with it? Is there a wise way to use it? Right now I believe God is everywhere I look, but having a tremendous hard time accepting His entire world and feeling Him. Think, think, think! Dalai Lama says. But only by thinking we wont be able to understand. The practice seems the only way for now. I want to love man kind, I want to love my neighbors as Ivan Karamazov says in the book, but, as him, I find very, very hard to do so. No, this time the mind won't be up for the job. As for now I have the option of trusting without understanding, following the path, concentrating my mind and following the doctrine, or to be always angry or sad for everything I see, within and without, that breaks my heart so badly.
"... E de novo acredito que nada do que é importante se perde verdadeiramente.