For People Who Want to Grow Up

Life’s difficulties don’t become fewer, but they don’t have to be a problem. There is a saying attributed to Lao Tzu which defines a great man as someone who encounters difficulties but never experiences them.

Problems are problems when we’re trying to find an answer to them or when we’re trying to get away from them. Problems are problems as long as we have the idea that there shouldn’t be any. But when problems, difficulties, obstacles and hindrances are taken as food – something that you learn to chew over, digest and take in – they become part of life, rather than something outside attacking you, something to be blamed. They actually become an essential part of your experience in life and a way in which you can always grow larger.

As long as we think about ourselves, about life and each other as all separate things, we remain very tiny and frightened. You can see the unfortunate results of people who’ve lived on their own for a long time and thought about themselves a lot: they have become highly self-conscious. Their power of imagination may be very strong, but as life goes on it becomes increasingly obsessive, and the sense of self becomes tighter.

Somebody who was working in a hospice told me that one of the most tragic things is to see dying people talking about their furniture, their china ducks on the wall, worrying about what to do with the mahogany wardrobe when they’re gone and still remembering grudges and grievances over things that happened over twenty years ago. Their mind is caught up with these minute physical things. These people have never learned to go ‘out’ at all: to go into the unknown, into where it’s frightening, strange and uncomfortable.

The path of waking up, of meditating, of opening up the mind, will take you into places that are uncomfortable, strange and frightening sometimes. It’s for people who want to grow up, not for those who are looking for something to lean on, something to get lost in or something to do as a kind of hobby.

This reflection by Ajahn Sucitto is from the book, The Most Precious Gift, (pdf) pp. 68-69.