Giving, Separation, Sadness

Reflecting on this moment, we can see the inter-connectedness between meeting and separation. Everyone who comes together here must separate.

This is one reflection on travelling. We are always leaving a place and moving on to meet someone else. When we are invited somewhere, we fly from airport to airport. When it’s time to leave, there is always this feeling of sadness, especially when we have liked being with the people.

There is always a gladness in meeting people who are Buddhists or who are pleased to have us with them or interested in what we are doing. We can watch this in the mind when going to a Buddhist group: the happiness of people receiving us and then the sadness of separation from people who have treated us well and have been very respectful.

This is the way things are. We don’t need to make anything out of it, but reflecting on Dhamma helps us to understand what it means to be human. We don’t try to feel nothing so that we would be able to be totally blank and indifferent. Not daring to feel gladness, sadness or any other emotional state, but being indifferent and insensitive is not the Middle Way at all.

Sensitivity requires us to feel these things, to know what they are. We’re not afraid to feel likings, and we’re unafraid at feeling pain. Because we were born into this form, we are very sensitive and have emotions. That’s just the way it is, the way we feel and will feel until we die – when we’re dead we won’t feel anything. Being human is like this. We have these human attractions and aversions.

Male and female: there it is, human attractions on the human plane with its sensory consciousness. We feel hot or cold and well or sick. We enjoy being with people who have common interests. We are angry or annoyed with people who do things we don’t like.

This is the way it is, but as meditators we reflect on the whole process, seeing and understanding it with wisdom and knowledge, not just trying to cut our heart out so we don’t have to feel anything whatsoever. Trying to avoid forming any attachments and cutting our hearts out means having very callous ideas about Dhamma-practice…

…Actually, sadness is not depressing. We can become depressed by wanting things to be otherwise, thinking, ‘There must be something wrong with me.’ But this realm is a realm of death, sadness, separation, of having to separate from the loved. We give our hearts and have great feelings of love for each other, and then comes the separation that is part of that and the sadness that comes from separation.

We can see this in our own everyday experiences. We can contemplate it in our life, just noticing it in little ways…

This reflection by Luang Por Sumedho is from the book Ajahn Sumedho Anthology, Volume 1—Peace Is a Simple Step, “Life Is Quite Sad, Isn’t It?,” (pdf) pp. 175-176.