Today I read an interesting story in my daily meditation book, The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo. (I highly recommend this book for your spiritual endeavors for 2011)
An old Hindu master grew tired of his apprentice complaining so he gave him a glass of water and a handful of salt and told him to mix the salt in the water, then drink it. The apprentice drank it, spit it out and said it tasted bitter. Next the master gave him another handful of salt and led him to a lake. He instructed him to throw the salt in the lake then taste the lakewater. He then asked him how it tasted. The apprentice replied, “Fresh”. “Do you taste the salt?”, asked the master. “No”, replied the apprentice. The master took his hands and said, “The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life is the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends upon the container we put it in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is enlarge your sense of things…..stop being a glass and become a lake.”
If, when I set out to yoga everyday, all I saw was camel pose (the one feared the most) I’d probably turn around and go home. If I look at all 26 poses as a class, I can’t wait to get there. If I’m facing a major challenge in my life, I need to minimize it and put it in it’s place and magnify each of the other hundreds of things that make up my life so the challenge is but a tiny sailboat on the sea. Every time I see a boat floating in the bay on my daily beach-walk, I will think “Be an ocean”. Hopefully that analogy will quicken my step and make breathing through the particular struggle on my mind that day taste less bitter.
And so, as another day goes by, I will be reminded all things in life need to be kept in perspective so the energy of the universe can move the challenges, as well as the victories, forward in a positive direction, and….I have written.
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