One Of The Five Remembrances
“My deeds are my closest companions. I am the beneficiary of my deeds. My deeds are the ground on which I stand.”
-Buddhist Scripture
This is a powerful meditation and the fifth of the five remembrances. To be aware of the influence of our deeds. Many of us go through life thinking that things “happen” to us. That things “happen” to our friends and family. We may feel cheated or in some ways that life is acting upon us. We may also feel a sense of disconnect from our own future. We are deceived into believing that people, forces and ideologies bigger than us have the control over our very lives. In my daily life and when I do my show and talk with people I often think about this idea in relation to drug use. Think about drug use. One may think about using and experimenting and the fuzzy line that exists between using….and being used. Many people can view an addict and say “Oh well, they made a choice.” True. But some choices can actually box us in and cause us to lose control of our own desires and thoughts. And that is a sad day. True we maintain control over our actions but sometimes that fuzzy line is crossed and we actually can relinquish control to someone or something else. And that is a sad sad muthaluvin day. The only thing that any of us truly and eternally own are our actions. again. THE ONLY THING THAT ANY OF US TRULY AND ETERNALLY OWN ARE OUR ACTIONS. We speculate about god and the afterlife. We may feel overpowered by our present. But our most precious possession is our own control and our action. The ability to think and act and respond and create and love and imagine and dream and to BE. And when we give that control to another substance or person or politician or preacher…We are in many ways no longer human. So I quote the great Michael Franti by encouraging all of us to Stay Human. Take time to choose…to act…to love. I was just thinking about these things today. I hope this makes sense.
love john
BTW
I added a new page for Dennis Kucinich 2008 over to the right hand side under “pages.”
I unabashedly and unequivocally and heterosexually love this man.
Check out the video. Discuss?
Matt says:
Wonderfully said.
August 10th, 2007 at 3:50 pm