I love you. The story of Deepavali.

 

Ramayana- The Deepavali Epic.

On the eve of his coronation, Rama was told by his father, the outgoing King Dasharata, that he was to be exiled to the forest for 14 years. Without a second's hesitation, he obeyed his father's decree and promptly prepared for his departure at day break. 

Accompanied by his newly wed wife Sita, and his half-brother Lakshmana, thus began The Ramayana aka Rama's Journey.

Ramayana is the first of two great epic poems of India written in Sanskrit, the other being The Mahabharata (therein contained the Bhagavad Gita). The great epics or Itihasa focusses on the teachings in Purusharta - Kama, Artha, Dhama, & Moksha. Or the goals of human life portraying intricate relationships, ideal roles of mother, father, servant, brother, sister, husband, wife and king. These are teachings of ancient Hindu sages, warriors and Kings. 

Deepavali is the day Rama, Sita, Lakshmana and Hanuman reached Ayodhya after a period of 14 years in exile after Rama's army of good defeated demon king Ravana's army of evil, rescuing Sita in the process.

These epic stories are fantastic, dramatic, filial, full of devotion & dedication to ones duty and deep-seated commitment to family and personal bonds. They provide us an in-depth view of the human condition and perhaps a plausible explanation as to why the Hindus live as they do and more importantly providing us with a blueprint as old as time to live a life of consciousness and enlightenment. Free from suffering. 

Watch the full length animated film version (1993) produced by Japanese director Yugo Sako & his team.

Ramayana. The Legend of Prince Rama.

I love you. Liberation

Suffering.

Whether you care to admit it or not. There is suffering.

https://unsplash.com/photos/PT-gOmCUlCY

The Universal symbol of Christianity is a torture instrument upon which Jesus suffered. 

The Cross is a reminder that there is suffering in this world.

All of us have our crosses to bear in this life. 

Gautama the Buddha became the awakened one by uncovering the first of his four noble truth- There is suffering. A simple and irrefutable truth that took him a lot of suffering to arrive at.

These two gentlemen went through great pain and suffering to both arrive to deliver this truth.

For each of us living this life, it is evident that it comes with pain and suffering and no one escapes this;

 “We are born astride the grave.” ~Samuel Beckett. 

"We are all dying the minute we are born. Goes fast. Don't waste it". (This dialogue quoting Beckett came from an episode of Ozarks I was watching one night.)

The way out of suffering is to let go grasping of desires. 

Desire

Desires are what make this life. 

We all have desires.

We can have desires. 

We can enjoy desires if we get them. 

We can live with desires. 

Desires arise and subside. 

Desires are impermanent but endless.

So do not be attached to desires. 

Because attachment to desire is the cause of suffering. 

"All that is subject to arising is subject to ceasing". This is wise (perfect) understanding, *according to Buddha's eightfold path.

That is all we need to know to have perfect understanding. 

When we know this we transcend suffering and achieve true liberation. 

This is what Easter, Buddhism and this post is all about. 

Transcendence to liberation. The end of suffering. 

HAPPY EASTER Everyone.

I love you. The Invitation #4

 The Sorrow.

This chapter begins with;

"EVERY LIFE HAS PAIN AND SORROW in it. It is part of being human.

"...All the while, deep inside, I know what I have always known: that the knowledge will never be enough.

 

This is the secret we keep from ourselves. And the moment it is revealed, we become aware of a need for something else: for the wisdom to live with what we do not know, what we cannot control, what is painful -  and still choose life. Wisdom is often born in the shadows, frequently more visible in the darkness than the light.

 

...We must move into darker places if we are to find the wisdom we so desperately need. We rarely go there willingly, though every life contain its own cycles of grief and celebration. To meet wisdom in these dark places we must be willing and able to hold all of what life gives us, to exclude nothing of ourselves or the world, to tell ourselves the truth. Wisdom will stretch us far beyond where we thought we could or wanted to go. She will show us what we cannot change or control, reveal what is hard to know about ourselves and the world, and tear at the illusions of what we think we know, until we are surrounded by the vastness of the mystery. And all the while, wisdom asks us to choose life. She does not want us to just continue, to hang on, to survive. She asks us to experience life actively, fully, every day - to show up for all of it. 

*At this point, a reprise of a phrase of the poem is in order...

       It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.

          I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, 

                 if you have been opened by life's betrayals 

          or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain. 

                    I want to know if you can sit with pain, 

           mine or your own,

                    without moving to hide it

           or fade it

                    or fix it.

 

~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer "