delighting.

A much more interesting, kind, adven-

turous, and joyful approach to life is to

begin to develop our curiosity, not caring

whether the object of our inquisitiveness is

bitter or sweet.  To lead a life that goes be-

yond pettiness and prejudice and always

wanting to make sure that everything turns

out on our terms, to lead a more pas-

sionate, full, and delightful life than that,

we must realize that we can endure a lot

of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding

out who we are and what this world is,

how we tick and how our world ticks, how

the whole thing just is.  If we're committed 

to comfort at any cost, as soon as we come

up against the least edge of pain, we're

going to run; we'll never know what's be-

yond that particular barrier or wall or fear-

ful thing.

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                          Our wisdom is all mixed

up with what we call our neurosis.  Our

brilliance, our juiciness, our spiciness, is

all mixed up with our craziness and our

confusion, and therefore it doesn't do any

good to try to get rid of our so-called neg-

ative aspects, because in that process we

also get rid of our basic wonderfulness.  We 

can lead our life so as to become more

awake to who we are and what we're doing.

The key is to wake up, to become more

alert, more inquisitive and curious about

ourselves.

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      The point is that our true nature is not

some ideal that we have to live up to.  It's

who we are right now, and that's what we

can make friends with and celebrate.

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In the same way, if we see our sp-called

limitations with clarity, precision, gentle-

ness, goodheartedness, and kindness and,

having seen them fully, then let go, open 

further, we begin to find that our world is

more vast and more refreshing and fasci-

nating than we had realized before.  In

other words, the key to feeling more whole

and less shut off and shut down is to be

able to see clearly who we are and what

we're doing.

           The innocent mistake that keeps us

caught in our own particular style of igno-

rance, unkindness, and shut-downness is

that we are never encouraged to see clearly

what is, with gentleness.  Instead, there's

a kind of basic misunderstanding that we

should try to be better than we already are,

that we should try to improve ourselves,

that we should try to get away from painful

things, and that if we could just learn how

to get away from the painful things, then

we would be happy.  That is the innocent,

naive misunderstanding that we all share, 

which keeps us unhappy.

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Joy has to do with seeing how big, how

completely unobstructed, and how pre-

cious things are.  Resenting what happens

to you and complaining about your life are

like refusing to smell the wild roses when

you go for a morning walk, or like being

so blind that you don't see a huge black

raven when it lands in the tree that you're 

sitting under.  We can get so caught up in

our own personal pain or worries that we

don't notice that the wind has come up

or that somebody has put flowers on the

diningroom table or that when we walked

out in the morning, the flags weren't up,

and that when we came back, they were

flying.  Resentment, bitterness, and holding

a grudge prevents us from seeing and hear-

ing and tasting and delighting.

(Pema Chodron)