I’ve recently finished re-reading the book “The Life of Milarepa”, a biography of a spiritual aspirant that got “famous” due to his extreme and dramatic experiences in life, a very though path on his way to spiritual liberation.
There is one quote, by Milarepa, that really made sense to me, as he puts this idea that I’ve been trying to express for quite some time, in a most simple and easy way:
“The affairs of the world will go on forever. Do not delay the practice of meditation.” – Milarepa
Very easily our minds drift in the pursuit of things and with the sense or urgency to solve thousands of problems in the world and ourselves. Be it social problems, politcal, economical, educational, ecological… or any other. But, like my master once said, on a collective level, perfection is impossible. It’s part of Nature, it’s part of the cycle of creation, to have clashes, struggles, evolution and degeneration. The world will never be perfect, and that is its perfection :)
We are now living in a specific context of time, space and people and we can easily get stuck in the dramas of the lives that surround us.Of course we have to be involved in the world, serve and help so that everything is a bit better everyday. But we simply can not let that those issues make us delay our spiritual progress – the only true progress.
Hence, my master said that in life we should have a subjective approach with an objective adjustment. Keeping our spiritual goal, we adapt and adjust to the real life around us.
New dramas will come, new conflicts, new ideas, new problems, even after we are long gone. “Perfection” will never come. It’s interesting to note that Milarepa lived about 1000 years ago, a time when society and its problems would be very different from those of today, mas the essence of this quote is exactly the same: problems will go on for ever, do not delay that which is the most important in life… we are just passing by :)
Under the Tamarind Tree 