This is the True Ride
My friends, let’s grow up.
Let’s stop pretending we don’t know the deal here.
Or if we truly haven’t noticed, let’s wake up and notice.
Look: Everything that can be lost, will be lost.
It’s simple — how could we have missed it for so long?
Let’s grieve our losses fully, like ripe human beings,
But please, let’s not be so shocked by them.
Let’s not act so betrayed,
As though life had broken her secret promise to us.
Impermanence is life’s only promise to us,
And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.
To a child she seems cruel, but she is only wild,
And her compassion exquisitely precise:
Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth,
She strips away the unreal to show us the real.
This is the true ride — let’s give ourselves to it!
Let’s stop making deals for a safe passage:
There isn’t one anyway, and the cost is too high.
We are not children anymore.
The true human adult gives everything for what cannot be lost.
Let’s dance the wild dance of no hope!
What does the notion of 'grieving our losses fully, without being betrayed by them' mean to you? Can you share a personal experience involving life's exquisitely precise compassion? How do we develop the strength to stop making deals for a safe passage?
Here's to no attachment, to full acceptance and to Dancing anyway and Enjoying Life and the people in it as much as possible and then releasing when it is time. Ebb and Flow. Hugs to everyone!
Yes....Life is like that. Maharshi Ramana once siad..." Accept whatever comes. Let it come and go. Endure peacefully without murmuring. The only way is left to burn you own KARMA. " What can ot be cured must be endured happily......
When I was diagnosed with an Incurable illness after a pretty healthy life I was first shocked, in denial, then realized that I had been woken up, given a lesson about the impermanence of everything. I felt blessed with this awakening.
I notice that many losses seem to tap into previous ones, an assist in a way, to completion. Love the tree illustration and the "leaves."
We're living in the 6th Extinction, only during the latest part of which did humanity come into existence. It's so difficult for me to include belief systems in this context, for instance especiailly the departures of loved ones.
I was listening to one master the other day and he said that instead of running away from difficult situations in life , stay with them and observe , let the feeling and emotions that arise within your body burn you , burn away the seeds of your karma . He said the suffering will burn you and let it burn , sit with it , feel it completely, you will shake , you will shiver and sweat , you want to run away , but don't do that , let the burning happen . Drop your struggle with suffering , accept and let it burn you so completely that nothing is left . That he said is nirvana , not being at peace and feeling good , but burning with your suffering .
Beautiful and Profound!
Reminded me of Stoicism - the practice of mentally rehearsing the loss of everything we have, as a spiritual practice of building gratitude and acknowledging the 'real deal'
And of Kabir who in one of his bhajan says 'Jin hodi un todi' (Those who shall attach will have to detach as well) - the seeds of death are right in life itself....
As I do my inner work, I realise the 'now' is when I am typing this...and it will also be 'now' when I die.....'now' when you are reading this.... 'now' when life gives you a taste of the real deal.....
Isn't that everything WILL be lost....it is already, in some way.....and that leaves me free to cherish it for the fleeting moments that it is there....all of it - relationships, life and Us :)
