Today's Daily Dharma from Tricycle:
Fully In Touch
The person that desires to have only pleasure and refuses pain expends an enormous amount of energy resisting life--and at the same time misses out enormously. He or she is on a self-defeating mission in any case, for just as we evade certain forms of suffering we inevitably fall victim to others. Underlying our glitzy modern consumer culture there is a deep spiritual under-nourishment and malaise that manifests all kinds of symptoms: nervous disorders, loneliness, alienation, purposelessness . . . So blanking out, running away, burying our heads in the sand or videotape will take us nowhere in the long run. If we really want to solve our problems--and the world's problems, for they stem from the same roots--we must open up and accept the reality of suffering with full awareness, as it strikes us, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, in the here-now. Then, strange as it may seem, we reap vast rewards. For suffering has its positive side. From it we derive the experience of depth: of the fullness of our humanity. This puts us fully in touch with other people and the rest of the Universe.
~ John Snelling, Elements of Buddhism
Chogyam Trungpa talks about the ability to face and hold suffering as developing the tender heart of the warrior. We have to be able to face our pain and the pain of others:
This is such a different sense of the warrior than we have in the West. Rather than conquering others, a true warrior acknowledges pain and suffering and can live with the truth of these feelings. The true warrior works to develop a tender and open heart as the only real path to freedom. This is what it means to be fully in touch.
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Tenderness contains an element of sadness. It is not the sadness of feeling sorry for yourself or feeling deprived but it is a natural situation of fullness. You feel so full and rich, as if you were about to shed tears. Your eyes are full of tears, and the moment you blink, the tears will spill out of your eyes and roll down your cheeks. In order to be a good warrior, one has to feel this sad and tender heart. If a person does not feel alone or sad, he cannot be a warrior at all.
~ Chogyam Trungpa
This is such a different sense of the warrior than we have in the West. Rather than conquering others, a true warrior acknowledges pain and suffering and can live with the truth of these feelings. The true warrior works to develop a tender and open heart as the only real path to freedom. This is what it means to be fully in touch.
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