"Those who have strong passions are never able to perceive the Way. It is like stirring up clear water with your hands; you may come wishing to find a reflection of your face, but you'll never see clearly in disturbed waters. A mind troubled and vexed with passions is never able to see the Way."
--Sutra of Forty-two Chapters
--Sutra of Forty-two Chapters
If this is true, my chances of enlightenment are slim to none, LOL! I have many passions and many fires burning.
I have always been very passionate about my "causes." M said to me a couple of weeks ago that he didn't know what it was like to be so very into something for so long (birth, for me). I told him that perhaps it is a personality style to be really committed to causes, because I've had a "cause" that I've felt devoted to since 1997, when I started working at the first battered women's shelter I worked in. That was the first time I felt that fire, that passion, that aliveness, that sense of "rightness," the attachment to the cause--the thing that is bigger than myself. I've had other work settings where I felt it and others where I haven't and I use that feeling as my guidepost to gauge whether I'm in the right place--if I'm working somewhere that does not make me feel "alive," I've GOT to get out of there or it feels like my spirit will be crushed. I have a physical sense of being squelched, when in a non-passion workplace.
I have more to say on this, but our chicken pen has just been finished and I'm being called to the grand unveiling and "release" of the chickens into their little yard for the first time!
I have always been very passionate about my "causes." M said to me a couple of weeks ago that he didn't know what it was like to be so very into something for so long (birth, for me). I told him that perhaps it is a personality style to be really committed to causes, because I've had a "cause" that I've felt devoted to since 1997, when I started working at the first battered women's shelter I worked in. That was the first time I felt that fire, that passion, that aliveness, that sense of "rightness," the attachment to the cause--the thing that is bigger than myself. I've had other work settings where I felt it and others where I haven't and I use that feeling as my guidepost to gauge whether I'm in the right place--if I'm working somewhere that does not make me feel "alive," I've GOT to get out of there or it feels like my spirit will be crushed. I have a physical sense of being squelched, when in a non-passion workplace.
I have more to say on this, but our chicken pen has just been finished and I'm being called to the grand unveiling and "release" of the chickens into their little yard for the first time!
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