I have so many books. Volumes and volumes on Somatics, Psychoanalysis, Health, Brain Research, Writing, Memoirs, Novels, Poetry. Every one of them – well almost everyone – would be great to sit down with and dive into head – or is it feet? – first.
I’ve been told by a couple of people to hold a book in my hand and if it brings me joy, keep it. If not, pass it on.
I’m doing a version of that – if I open a book and I want to read what is on the page, I keep it.
Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, who is pictured above on my meditation altar, wrote Into the Heart of Life. I bought it from her when I was in India. The meeting was so fraught with meaning,I didn’t even ask her to sign it!
I opened it at random today to read about The Eight Worldly Concerns:
“We are not generally aware of our appetite for praise and our dread of blame. We are not generally aware of how we yearn for a good reputation and fall anxious at the thought of the bad. We are not generally aware of how much we gravitate toward what we regard as pleasurable, nor how much we try to avoid what we regard as painful. But it is these eight worldly concerns that keep us revolving around and around in this cycle of birth and death, samsara.”
Don’t worry about what samsara is – or the cycle of birth and death. (You can Google it if you really want to know the Buddhist definition.) In my case, I want praise, hate to be blamed, yearn for a good reputation, become anxious if someone has an ill opinion of me, grasp for pleasure and avoid pain.
Do you recognize any of these behaviors as your own?
Thanks for exploring the mystery – Nicky Mendenhall