Skip to main content

Featured

Birth and Death of the Trivial Kind

There is magic in birth and death. In birth, the magic is in the enormous potential of the unknown. When you look at your newly born child, there is no way you can know what he or she will become. Later on, you might have some glimpses of their future selves, but in that very first moment, all that there is, is hope, the potential for greatness. It is very similar, and yet very different at the same time, when we look at death. On one side, it is the end; on the other it is the beginning for something new. But above all, it is an opportunity for closure. Even in the very last moment of a life, the dying person can say or do something that could change the lives of the ones present. A simple look sometimes can make us see things in a different light. I will never forget my dad’s last days. We took him to a terribly expensive and a terrible private hospital in Bulgaria. I had the feeling that the staff there only wanted to extract the maximum amount of money from us without giving much b...
1 comment
Read more

Faith and renunciation are impermanent, so make a resolute promise to exert yourself


དད་པ་ དང་ངེས་འབྱུང་མི་རྟག་པས་དམ་བཅའ་བརྟན་པོ་ལ་བརྩོན།

'Faith and renunciation are impermanent, so make a resolute promise to exert yourself'

Exerting myself is not a distinctive feature of my character. Yesterday, however, while trying (yet again!) to get back to my Tibetan studies, I stumbled at this short sentence from the great 19th century Buddhist master, Patrul Rinpoche and it was a some kind of revelation. As revelations usually go, the thing to be discovered have been right in front of me all the time but I just never payed attention to it.

So, with that revelation in mind, I decided to revive my journal and treat it like a diary. I will write in it whatever comes my way. Inspiration comes and goes but for sure it never materialises unless the person takes the pen and writes the words down. This reminds me of the recent interview of Bob Dylan for Wall Street Journal. He is talking about computers and how they could help with creativity. They can ‘get you over the hump’, he says, ‘but you have to get up early’. 

Of course, the exertion Patrul Rinpoche talks about concerns matters, much more important that writing useless thoughts on paper, but who knows: even small things like that can make a difference for someone. Even if that person is just me.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts