Worldy Winds

When I started leading my sitting group and writing these posts more than 2 years ago, I was in deep grief from losing one of my beloved cats, Riley, unexpectedly. It was a long journey to traverse, yet it led me to many wonderful blessings including the opportunity to lead the meditation group, which is now co-ed thriving with consistent attendants. Since then, my grand-daughter was born, who is now 16-months old. Just in a seemingly short 2 years, life seems to have changed in many ways.

Recently a few of my friends had to say good bye to their long-time beloved pets. I know that day will come sooner than later I will have to let go of my surviving 17-year old kitty, Nicola, too. Today, I have a dear friend fighting for life in Iowa. A few others in my life are welcoming new babies, my best friend is looking into adopting a puppy.

Then last week, I closed a real estate transaction, which was a happy ending for all parties involved. My client wrote raving 5-star reviews for me. Just as I was appreciating the success, I was contacted by a past client that I helped with a lease a while ago telling me that she may have to bring me into the lawsuit, and another client I spent a lot of time with wrote me to say she and her husband decided to work with someone else.

All this to say, life is happening everywhere. Buddha talked about “8 Worldly Winds,” which is a 4 sets of vicissitudes in life: gain and loss; pain and pleasure, praise and blame, and fame and disrepute. All or some of them can be happening all at once in a span of a day. Sometimes it’s easy to get blown all over the place by those winds, and my tendency is to be pulled towards the negative winds. My challenge is to take a pause and see the winds blowing in different directions and know that I can handle all these different winds with ease and equanimity.

#YouCanSitWithUs