Tango Alpha Mama

Remembering Love (Part 2)

Sunday, January 11, 2015

20 December 2013
Chapel on the Hill

Katharine Hepburn once said, "Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give - which is everything." Today, my dearest B, I give you my heart, my mind, my soul. I give you my trust, my hopes and dreams, my time, my love.

I give you my full support as you pursue your goals and aspirations. You will always have me as your number 1 fan during your triathlons and your loudest cheerleader each and every time you succeed. You will find me beside you through your darkest days, holding your hand as we wait faithfully for the lights and the rainbow.

I give you what little strength and courage I have as we face each day together as partners, parents and best frenemies. We may not see eye-to-eye on many things but we are stronger together when we choose to be.

I give you my trust, my wholehearted trust, that I can be myself with you, with my flaws and my weaknesses. I trust that I can be my most vulnerable with you, without fear of judgement and rejection. I give you my whole self, no masks, no walls, just me.

I give you my hopes and dreams, weaving them with yours, working towards them with you. I give you my choice to choose you among all the voices that ask and demand for my time and attention. I give you my promise to put you and our marriage and our family first, with God as our strength and hope.

I am grateful for God's blessing that is you. You have never given up on us, never faltered on your promise to take care of me, never left me alone since the day I said yes to you.

Thank you for loving me without fail. Thank you for taking me back, your prodigal wife. Thank you for never asking me to change, for simply showing me through your example how to be a better person. Thank you for inspiring me to take flight, to be free, and thank you for happily welcoming me back each time I come home. Thank you for helping me find the Lord in your faithful love.

I love you, B. Peksman.

Through the Looking Glass

Let It Go (Part 1)

Sunday, January 11, 2015

I personally like Buddhism and its concepts. I find that it complements most of my Christian and Jesuit beliefs and provides a more practical way of living life.

This well-written article focuses on balance and compassion, on enlightenment and action for others. It reminds me of my calling in life - to be a woman for others (often easier said than done).

ATTACHMENTS & LIBERATION

"It is impossible to live in the world without attachments, or indeed to eradicate them. Our affections for others, the desire to succeed in our endeavors, our interests and passions, our love of life itself--all of these are attachments and potential sources of disappointment or suffering, but they are the substance of our humanity and the elements of engaged and fulfilled lives."

Buddhism is a teaching of liberation, aimed at freeing people from the inevitable sufferings of life. To this end, early Buddhist teachings focused on the impermanence of all things. The Buddha realized that nothing in this world stays the same; everything is in a constant state of change. Pleasurable conditions, favorable circumstances, our relationships with those we hold dear, our health and well-being--any sense of comfort and security we derive from these things is continually threatened by life's flux and uncertainty, and ultimately by death, the most profound change of all.

The Buddha saw that people's ignorance of the nature of change was the cause of suffering. We desire to hold on to what we value, and we suffer when life's inevitable process of change separates us from those things. Liberation from suffering comes, he taught, when we are able to sever our attachments to the transient things of this world.

Buddhist practice, in this perspective, is oriented away from the world: life is suffering, the world is a place of uncertainty; liberation lies in freeing oneself from attachment to worldly things and concerns, attaining a transcendent enlightenment.

The Lotus Sutra, upon which Nichiren Buddhism is based, is revolutionary in that it reverses this orientation, overturning the basic premises of the Buddha's earlier teachings and focusing people's attention instead on the infinite possibilities of life and the joy of living in the world.

Where other teachings had regarded enlightenment, or the final liberation of Buddhahood, as a goal to be attained at some future point in time, in the teachings of the Lotus Sutra each person is inherently and originally a Buddha. Through Buddhist practice we develop our enlightened qualities and exercise them in the world here and now for the sake of others and for the purpose of positively transforming society. The true nature of our lives at this moment is one of expansive freedom and possibility.

This dramatic reorientation effected by the Lotus Sutra is distilled in the key and seemingly paradoxical concepts of Nichiren Buddhism that "earthly desires are enlightenment" and "the sufferings of birth and death are nirvana." The image of the pure lotus flower blossoming in the muddy swamp is a metaphor that encapsulates this perspective--freedom, liberation, enlightenment are forged and expressed in the very midst of the murky swamp of life with its problems, pains and contradictions.

It is impossible to live in the world without attachments, or indeed to eradicate them. Our affections for others, the desire to succeed in our endeavors, our interests and passions, our love of life itself--all of these are attachments and potential sources of disappointment or suffering, but they are the substance of our humanity and the elements of engaged and fulfilled lives.

The challenge is not to rid oneself of attachments but, in the words of Nichiren, to become enlightened concerning them. The teachings of Nichiren thus stress the transformation, rather than the elimination, of desire. Desires and attachments fuel the quest for enlightenment. As he wrote: "Now Nichiren and others who chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo . . . burn the firewood of earthly desires and behold the fire of enlightened wisdom..."

In their proper perspective--when we can see them clearly and master them rather than being mastered by them--desires and attachments enable us to lead interesting and significant lives. As SGI President Daisaku Ikeda says, "Our Buddhist practice enables us to discern their true nature and utilize them as the driving force to become happy."

It is our small ego, our "lesser self," that makes us slaves to our desires and causes us to suffer. Buddhist practice enables us to break out of the shell of our lesser self and awaken to the "greater self" of our inherent Buddha nature.

This expanded sense of self is based on a clear awareness of the interconnected fabric of life which we are part of and which sustains us. When awakened to the reality of our relatedness to all life, we can overcome the fear of change and experience the deeper continuities beyond and beneath the ceaseless flow of change.

The basic character of our greater self is compassion. Ultimate freedom is experienced when we develop the ability to channel the full energy of our attachments into compassionate concern and action on behalf of others.

[Courtesy July 2011 SGI Quarterly]

Through the Looking Glass

Remembering Love (Part 1)

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Bookworm Tidbits

Courage

Monday, January 05, 2015

"But there's another way, and I'll leave you with this. This is what I have found: to let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen; to love with our whole hearts, even though there's no guarantee -- and that's really hard, and I can tell you as a parent, that's excruciatingly difficult -- to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, when we're wondering, "Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this this passionately? Can I be this fierce about this?" just to be able to stop and, instead of catastrophizing what might happen, to say, "I'm just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I'm alive." And the last, which I think is probably the most important, is to believe that we're enough. Because when we work from a place, I believe, that says, "I'm enough," then we stop screaming and start listening, we're kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we're kinder and gentler to ourselves.

Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language -- it's from the Latin word cor, meaning heart -- and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can't practice compassion with other people if we can't treat ourselves kindly. And the last was they had connection, and -- this was the hard part -- as a result of authenticity, they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were, which you have to absolutely do that for connection."

- Brene Brown

This is my personal struggle and goal. To be courageous enough to tell my story, to be imperfect, to be kind and to be authentic in order to forge necessary human connections in the pursuit of real happiness. To accept vulnerability instead of trying to numb it. To really be me, and not an aloof girl feigning strength and invincibility. To accept that I am enough. To forgive and reach out in the face of rejection, to be human enough to practice real compassion and empathy, and to be big enough to be light in the world. To embrace vulnerability and be truly human.