Situations

 With palms together,

Good Afternoon All,

We each suffer moments throughout our day. Sometimes these are truly difficult and often, less difficult, but moments of suffering non-the-less. Our situation may be critical, it may contain triggers that bring us to responses of anger or hurt, sadness or remorse, but its not the situation that is the issue, but ratherm our responses to it.

Situations are just situations, they are the "given" of the moment. Often out of our power to change, they have the power to trigger us. What we tend to do is blame the situation, or what we perceive to be the causes of the situation, but these are what they are and we cannot change them.

What we can change is how we respond when in the middle of them, because it is often our response that makes the situation worse. It is "something added."

A wise man once told me to "sit on my hands" when playing chess. He rightly observed I was "snapping off" moves...much to my own detriment. We all tend to do this, snap off a feeling, blame someone or something, and dig in when this "snap" creates a sense of defensiveness on others. It is rarely the situation that is the problem then; it is our felt response.

My advise? Sit on your hands, or in other words, practice the Buddha Way and stop. Take care of yourself, then open your heart to those in front of you and let the rest fall away.

With gratitude,

Daiho