Running to the grave

An old Zen master was on his death bed surrounded by his disciples when he suddenly open his eyes, sat up and asked for his slippers. The disciples of course were concerned and advised him to lay down since he was dying. The master however insisted on his slippers. As he was walking from his deathbed, he told his disciples that he was going to his grave. Until the very end the master did not want to burden anyone, even the burden of carrying his dead body to his grave.

It seems an extreme example but sometimes extreme examples help us remember things better. The point is that everyone should live life to the fullest and never be an emotional, physical or financial burden to their loved ones.  We should live life to the fullest and be an absolute source of comfort and support for our loved ones.

We should all aspire to inspire our loved ones by running to our graves.

The irony of life is we can only live it totally when we accept our own death. Lets stop and think about it for a moment. Most of us do not want to think about our own mortality due to fear. However fear is what keeps us from living life to the fullest. In fact almost all our traditions and superstitions are methods to try and provide some form of security against fear. At the root of all fear is the fear of death. The moment we accept the inevitability of our own death, we are free to live life to the fullest. The moment we accept insecurity, we become secure.

In life we learn by making mistakes. But we should try not to repeat mistakes because repeating it  means we did not learn anything. Repeating mistakes mean that we did not mature from the experience. When we continue to repeat our mistakes, we only grow old but we do not grow up. Live life with more alertness and awareness so that we keep improving our understanding how to make better choices.

If we want to change the direction of our lives, we must transform. Information alone does not transform. Transformation arises from understanding, growing and maturing. These attributes are linked to the mind, heart and spirit. When these aspects transform, than body transformation is inevitable. New year resolutions and vows do not transform because it creates a situation of forced effort . The resolution or vow simply means that we are forcing something upon ourselves. When there is a deeper sense of understanding, there is no need to take a vow. our understanding is enough. We understand why something is wrong and we drop it immediately. This applies to most of our bad habits

While our blog can only provide information, we hope that the readers make effort to accept this information to heart so that it leads to understanding and transformation. We should all aspire to inspire our loved ones by running to our graves.