There was a period of time, during my Buddhism journey - when I realized I am not a good person. It happened when I started to monitor my thoughts. I realized that it was a painful thing to do at the beginning, since every thought I watched is about myself - I am a selfish person and the discovery made me feel even a bit depressed. I started to observe issues on myself, biggest two are anger and anxiety. I realized why I have been a shy person all my life - I value and care about myself too much, and anxiety builds up on me, and that anxiety may even came from my past life, I remember being an anxious girl when I was a kid.
So now I am aware of the issues, and I have a solution - Buddhism practice. Basically first grow awareness of mind, keep the mind and heart in a state of peace and content, and then stay alert when that state is changed. When moments of anger and anxiety happens, try to calm down by chanting Amitabha, coupled with sutra work when a chunk of time is available. This approach slowly helped, and now I am writing this blog in a peaceful mind.
In additional to self-improvement, I also start to accept myself - nobody is perfect and more so about myself. It is the way it is - and there are reasons, causes behind it, reasons and causes that I could never change - as I carried them from the past. However, I can change the future, at least I can try my best. Change is not easy, I need to be patient with myself, but have faith that it will happen someday, somehow, somewhere, as I continue my journey. That is how I get out of my bad feelings, and more - I realized I can logically detach myself from my surroundings, although I still emotionally react to it, everything is just a thing, and nobody can force bad thoughts in my mind!
You know how it feels to be peaceful, your heart is settled, nothing bothers you, nothing to worry about. Although the fact is there is nothing for me to worry about at this moment, I know I feel content.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)