21.5.800 21 Day Challenge Day 19

http://binduwiles.com/buddhism/my-new-project-21-5-800/

Tired from a lovely, long bike ride with the big kids, my love, and his dad. Seventeen miles through the Virginia mountains on an old railroad bed. It was a great day; one in which I feel I did something so healthy for myself and so meaningful for my family. I go to bed at ease tonight.

Today I have been exploring attachment in my writing. It's crazy, but I am still having issues with a tooth that I had worked on earlier in the week and I am convinced part of the intensity of the pain is my fear of losing the tooth. I am certainly attached to this notion, so I am trying to work through those feelings so I can move on whether it gets well or not.

Here are some words about attachment...they could apply to anything in which we place too much emotion...hope they are an inspiration for you somewhere in your life.

‘...the sense of an object as being attractive, unattractive, or neutral...feelings of pleasure, pain, or neutrality arise. Due to such feelings, attachment develops, this being the attachment of not wanting to separate from pleasure and the attachment of wanting to separate from suffering...’ The Dalai Lama at Harvard, 1988, Snow Lion USA, p.86-7

Non-attachment gives us the much-needed space to contemplate what we want and what we hate so as to more fully reflect upon whether these things we love or loathe will truly bring us the pain or pleasure we believe they contain. By reflecting in this way we can choose what to do and what not to do - it puts the brakes on to some degree. Non-attachment can therefore be seen as the general antidote for all excesses and indulgences. It attempts to wake us up to the actual state of things and provides us with a kind of barrier to place between ourselves and the world we engage with. It dampens our drives and cools our passions in order to reflect on what is or is not a good path to follow. It forces us to contemplate the probable consequences inherent in every action we are considering.  The Path to Non-Attachment by Peter Morrell

Happy Weekend!
Namaste,
Jeannie