The dharma talk this morning was on accepting our human limitations. That includes death. And after I got back my husband and I went out to lunch with our younger daughter and her boyfriend, and there were human limitations. Our waitress forgot about us, served us rancid chips, brought our lunch which clearly had been waiting for her to pick up for twenty minutes and tasted awful, and we were forced to acknowledge her limitations as a waitress by tipping less than we would have. Oh, right, that's not what Anam Thubten meant. My limitations were reached, too, that's for sure. Another in an endless lesson on patience.
Our teacher said that fear is the biggest hindrance to awareness. And our fear of death is our foremost fear. If we could embrace life, and not get hung up on the birth and death thing, just understand that life is continuous and we are a part of that beginningless, endless dynamic, then we could live with the world as it is and our lives as they are. I like the sound of that. And for very brief moments I can feel it in my heart.
I had a good talk with the man sitting next to me during meditation. Well, not during, but before. He's lived in a ashram, and has had many teachers and was fascinating to talk to. He has the same first name as my dad. And for some reason I thought of my brother, as if this guy was a stand in for my silent frere. There was some synchronicity. I'm open to that right now. I can't talk to my brother, but I can talk to this man, and listening to him, I saw what he wasn't saying, about addiction and feeling lost and searching for meaning. I was able to be compassionate and open. It's a strange, wonderful world.
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