Allspirit

Tag: answer

  • Life Is Very Brief

    From: The Wisdom of No Escape

    By Pema Chödrön

    Life is very brief. Even if we live to be a hundred, it’s very brief. Also, its length is unpredictable. Our lives are impermanent. I myself have, at the most, thirty more years to live, maybe thirty-five, but that would be tops. Maybe I have only twenty more years to live. Maybe I don’t even have one more day to live. It’s sobering to me to think that I don’t have all that long left. It makes me feel that I want to use it well. If you realize that you don’t have that many more years to live and if you live your life as if you actually had only a day left, then the sense of impermanence heightens that feeling of preciousness and gratitude. Traditionally it’s said that once you are born, you immediately start dying. I remember that in Boulder, every year the Hare Krishna people put up a display of life-sized figures starting with a newborn baby, through all the stages of life. You couldn’t help but identify with this figure getting bigger and stronger, in the prime of life, until the whole thing starts going downhill and the figure is shown getting older, with the final one a corpse. You don’t even know if you’re going to have the privilege of going through that whole process. Even if you do, impermanence is very real.

    When you’re depressed, you may say to yourself, “Why bother to sit? Why bother to find out, for my own sake and for the sake of others, what this depression is about? Why does it drag me down? How come the sky was so blue yesterday and now everything is so gray? How come everyone was smiling at me yesterday and now they’re all frowning at me? How come yesterday I felt like I was doing everything right and today it seems I’m doing everything wrong? How come? How come? How come?” If you’re alone in retreat, you still get depressed. There’s no one to blame it on; it’s just this feeling that happens. You ask yourself, what is it? What is it? What is it? I want to know. How can I rouse myself? What can I do that’s not completely habitual? How can I get out of this rut? How do we stop the habitualness of our process? The teachings say, “Well, that’s why we sit. That’s what mindfulness is about. Look carefully. Pay attention to details.”

    Remembering impermanence motivates you to go back and look at the teachings, to see what they tell you about how to work with your life, how to rouse yourself, how to cheer up, how to work with emotions. Still, sometimes you’ll read and read and you can’t find the answer anywhere. But then someone on a bus will tell you, or you’ll find it in the middle of a movie, or maybe even in a commercial on TV. If you really have these questions, you’ll find the answers everywhere. But if you don’t have a question, there’s certainly no answer.

    More from Pema Chödrön

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  • Question

    Song Lyrics on Allspirit

    The Moody Blues

    Written by Justin Hayward

    Why do we never get an answer
    When we’re knocking at the door
    With a thousand million questions
    About hate and death and war?
    ‘Cos when we stop and look around us,
    There is nothing that we need,
    In a world of persecution
    That is burning in its greed.

    Why do we never get an answer
    When we’re knocking at the door
    Because the truth is hard to swallow
    That’s what the war of love is for

    It’s not the way that you say it
    When you do those things to me
    It’s more the way that you mean it
    When you tell me what will be

    And when you stop and think about it
    You won’t believe it’s true
    That all the love you’ve been giving
    Has all been meant for you.

    I’m looking for someone to change my life,
    I’m looking for a miracle in my life
    And if you could see what it’s done to me,
    To lose the love I knew
    Could safely lead me through.

    Between the silence of the mountains,
    And the crashing of the sea,
    There lies a land I once lived in,
    And she’s waiting there for me,
    But in the grey of the morning,
    My mind becomes confused,
    Between the dead and the sleeping,
    And the road that I must choose.

    I’m looking for someone to change my life,
    I’m looking for a miracle in my life
    And if you could see what it’s done to me,
    To lose the love I knew,
    Could safely lead me to
    The land that I once knew,
    To learn as we grow old
    The secrets of our soul.

    It’s not the way that you say it
    When you do those things to me
    It’s more the way you really mean it
    When you tell me what will be

    Why do we never get an answer
    When we’re knocking at the door
    With a thousand million questions
    About hate and death and war?
    ‘Cos when we stop and look around us,
    There is nothing that we need,
    In a world of persecution
    That is burning in its greed.

    Index of Lyrics on Allspirit

     

  • Let It Be

    The Beatles

    Lennon/McCartney

    From the album Let It Be

    When I find myself in times of trouble
    Mother Mary comes to me
    Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
    And in my hour of darkness
    She is standing right in front of me
    Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
    Let it be, let it be.
    Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

    And when the broken hearted people
    Living in the world agree,
    There will be an answer, let it be.
    For though they may be parted there is
    Still a chance that they will see
    There will be an answer, let it be.
    Let it be, let it be. Yeah
    There will be an answer, let it be.

    And when the night is cloudy,
    There is still a light that shines on me,
    Shine on until tomorrow, let it be.
    I wake up to the sound of music
    Mother Mary comes to me
    Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
    Let it be, let it be.
    There will be an answer, let it be.
    Let it be, let it be,
    Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

    Index of Lyrics on Allspirit