October 27, 2010

  • Welcoming obstacles

    Reflections


    |Situations do come, so do you remain happy even then?

    Last Sunday night, a dear friend of mine told me that I should welcome obstacles. Why? Because, he said, it will increase my "authority of experience".

    He added that even when situations come I should remain happy and still be my beaming self.

    He compared obstacles with a test paper, and with this he said "take that paper happily and move forward in your class of experience and not be confused."

    Sometimes when obstacles come our way we get all stressed out, wishing that it would disappear. The sad thing is, almost always, these "papers" continue to come. And when one goes away, another comes.

    In class, students get plenty of examinations. I remember when I was still a student, we had to study at least 100 pages from our books because everyday, both before and after class, our teacher would give us an examination of the previous lesson and then the day's lesson after.

    We would complain a lot because it is just so tiresome, cumbersome, stressful. Besides, we no longer have time to watch our favorite shows on TV, or surf the net, or go out with our friends. Our social life was ruined.

    Today, I found the wisdom of those examinations. It was not meant to punish us, rather it was meant for us to be able to learn the lesson to the point that it becomes deeply etched in the engrams of our brains.

    In real life, this would equate to experience. And once we have the experience, it becomes automatic for us to apply a solution that we've come to learn from the previous experience once a similar situation would occur. We don't need to wrack our brains to find for solutions anymore.

    Of course, this can only be had if together with experience there is recognition and then realization. Otherwise, even if we were able to conquer an obstacle if we did not do our homework of recognizing and knowing the situation by heart (through realization) we would still think that if a similar obstacles comes, its a new one.

    So, the next time when obstacles come, welcome it. Get to know it by heart, embrace it, and then learn from it. Obstacles are our friends, after all.

    Photo from the Cheerful Monk.


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