Sickness, old age and death
Sickness, old age and death are not party poopers. If you fear there imminence and see these facets of existence as ruining the show, then you have a problem that is a self imposed problem. A problem that is being created through ignorance.
Thankfully, awareness of a problem includes awareness of the solution, although this is unlikely to be obvious or to become clear in one go. The problem isn’t sickness, old age and death, it’s purely in how you are relating to conceptions of these.
It doesn’t really need to be said, that some experiences of life are tough and not a lot of fun. Saying so, isn’t particularly insightful and doesn’t change that no one has ever been able to find a separate self nature within anything, including pleasure and pain. The tendency to trap a self within things creates a problem where there isn’t one. That there isn’t someone who undergoes a journey through sickness, old age and death is a blessing that is probably more often perceived to be a terrible curse.
We can be terrified of real freedom and seek to avoid it at all costs. In doing so, we don’t tend to appreciate that we are adding weight to a burden that we are involved in making. It is a heavy, common, and ordinary burden that neither helps ourselves or others. Still, compassion love and wisdom are flowing through cause and effect too, only these are often mistaken for punishment, at least at first. Consequence is unavoidable and, as there isn’t a self within it, it is not punishment at all, like everything else it is teaching.
When we die, our world dies too – this is great compassion.
Look, look and look again. Look until looking is exhausted. Looking is letting go, and looking is seeing from the first. A problem that is created, is a problem that is dissolving.
Willard 04/08/2025
Edited 24/08/2025