PRACTICING PEACE

Sometimes everything is right, the air is easy to breath in and out and life is mundane and sweet...and then in walks someone with their drama into your easy peace and dumps a bucket of slop on  you; try to get that off. Really, some folks have so much attachment to the drama in their life they stockpile it, carry it around everywhere, and when they notice you, apparently, have none, they like to dump it on you as they walk on by. I can't imagine what pleasure this brings them, more drama? more self-destructive behavior? more self-hate? To be honest, it is difficult for me to shake off and free myself of their drive-by ugliness, mostly because I just can't get over how self-centered, heartless, and cold that behavior is, it is simply on the opposite end of my beliefs and practices of becoming the best human being I can be. I can't understand it; how it is it that some feel the need to spread ugly acts instead of loving kindness. Love begets love. Really, when this is thrown on me, I feel like the woman in the John William Waterhouse painting, Boreas, being hit by the unexpected, cold north wind; for days I struggle to balance myself back on level ground. In saying all of that, and always in my struggle and anger to shake off the ugly drama, I finally realize that I am right where I should be, I am again up against the lesson I most need at the time. My struggle is my lesson: learn how to let them drop their slop bucket of drama on me and have no reaction, none, at all, not even one of disgust and intolerance.  I have to learn, still learning, how to be more tolerant and more loving and more compassionate and more accepting. I'm still learning how to do this and still learning how to be in the present moment, despite others difficulties, of peace.




Our true home is in the present moment.


To live in the present moment is a miracle.


The miracle is not to walk on water.


The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment


to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.


Peace is all around us -- in the world, and in nature --


and within us -- in our bodies and our spirits.


Once we learn to touch this peace,


we will be healed and transformed.


It is not a matter of faith;


It is a matter of practice.


--Thich Nhat Hanh