Charlotte Joko Beck 496 words, 19K views, 13 comments
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On Dec 22, 2009Rod wrote :
Today's InnerNet Weekly contains an article on the meaning and experience of suffering. The text has been extracted from a book by Charlotte Joko Beck. For a wider view of the context of that text, I suggest you also read the sections in the book titled "Relationships Don't Work" and "Relationship Is Not to Each Other."
The text on suffering focuses on the need to accept our suffering as a part (and only a part) of the vast web of relationships in which we are perpetually embedded. However, by focussing on only our own suffering, we find it difficult to realize others also suffer and we have an obligation to assist in removing their suffering. If we refuse a part of Indra's Web by judging it as 'bad', we are refusing the totality of the Web and our part in it. And, since we are an integral pat of the Web, by refusing to accept the suffering of others, we are refusing to see our essential nature as part of that Web. As a consequence of that rejection, it is also harder to accept OTHERS as part of that Web. Thus, by not accepting others we do not fully accept ourselves. This is the basis for accepting the cruelty and suffering of others and our unwillingness to accept their suffering as also part of ourselves and our obligation to help in removing it from the Web.
How do we help reduce the totality of suffering in the Web? Joko Beck has a suggestion:
"So, relationships don't work........Well, what does work then? The only thing that works (if we really practice) is a desire not to have something for myself but to support all life, including individual relationships.... But nobody really wants to do that. We don't want to support others. To truly support somebody means to give them everything and expect nothing. You might give them your time, , your work, your money, anything. "If you need that, I'll give it to you." Love expects nothing. Instead of that we have these games: "I'm going to communicate so our relationship will be better," which really means "I'm going to communicate so you'll see what I want." The underlying expectation we bring to those games ensures that relationships won't work. If we really see that, then a few of us will understand the next step, of seeing another way of being. We may get a glimpse of it now and then: "Yes, I can do this for you. I can support your life and I expect nothing, Nothing."
On Dec 22, 2009 Rod wrote :
Today's InnerNet Weekly contains an article on the meaning and experience of suffering. The text has been extracted from a book by Charlotte Joko Beck. For a wider view of the context of that text, I suggest you also read the sections in the book titled "Relationships Don't Work" and "Relationship Is Not to Each Other."