A Stranger with Gifts

Let there be nothing behind you; leave the future to one side. Do not clutch at what is left in the middle; then you will become a wanderer and calm.

Sutta Nipata 949

۞۞۞۞

Isn’t it true that when I meet someone I have met before that I am not really meeting that person but the person I imagined to meet before? It could be that there have been so many changes in that one’s life since the last time we met that it is impossible to know him or her in the same way again. I am often in the mind to seek permanence and wish so badly to be secure that I forget the basics of the path. I want love to last forever and I want to be always in the state of grace on which I am on a pink cloud. But there is nothing in my life that says anything is always going to be the same tomorrow as it was yesterday. So, because nothing stays the same, isn’t it better for me to see that person in the very moment we are in? This moment is the sacred moment that will pass and every opportunity for joy and sharing is in this very pause between birth and death. “The wind blows where it will,” says the Carpenter, “so it is with one that is born of the spirit.”
   The sunsets and sunrises of yesterday are but a memory... a picture implanted in memory. I can never expect a sunset to be the same as yesterday nor the sunrise to have the same clouds in the same glory. Therefore, I am encouraged to enjoy every moment I am in, and every person on the path, as though I am meeting a stranger with gifts.

geo 5,229