Friday, hot hot friday.
Got to the market at 7.30. Beautiful fresh organic cos lettuce. A dragon fruit - F’s favourite , for after school.
Then, my old nemesis J, completely unavoidable as we were both well into buying our punnets of blueberries right next to eachother before we recognised one another. She has dyed her hair. We made a bit of pleasant conversation about how hot it is and how our personal body thermostats at this age seem to have gone haywire. Then we both scuttled off. Mercifully no phoney overtures of ‘Must catch up some time’ I like her better for that. There’s really no charge left. All in the past now.
Why hold on to the idea that a certain person is my ‘enemy’?
Reading Stephen Bachelor Buddhism without Beliefs on this whole routine we all have of making some people into goodies, others into baddies etc. How we keep reinforcing our perceptions.
To help loosen up our rigid judgements he suggests this visualisation exercise:
Imagine the person as a newborn baby, covered in blood. Slowly follow her as she grows from a toddler to a child to an adolescent to a young adult to the moment you first met her. Try to picture what her hopes and longings were before she even suspected your existence. Think of her now as someone who values her own ideas and feelings in just the same inscrutable way you hold onto yours. Then look into the future and watch her age, fall ill and die.
Do this first while thinking of a friend, then a stranger, then an enemy, until three human beings sit before you: equal in birth and equal in death.
Hmmm. Challenging. But I know every time I open my heart/feel compassion/let go etc - I feel better for it...An ongoing project.
(Dragonfruit flower, snapped in Munduk, Bali last year)
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