Last week my family and I vacationed in Maine. We stayed near Popham Beach. I had the chance to walk down to the mouth of the Kennebec River and say my daily prayers.
The union of the river and the ocean was a fitting place to greet the world, offering me a place to chant, “May the healing light of love fill the planet and all beings on it.”
Along came an apologetic woman with her two plodding, drooling dogs. She did not want to interrupt the “zen” of the moment.
I told her that I understood, slobbering dogs were part of it all.
We laughed.
Pema Chodron is teaching me one of her lessons in “Comfortable with Uncertainty.” Teaching no. 23, The Facts of Life: Egolessness, “That we take ourselves so seriously, that we are so absurdly important in our own mind, is a problem. Self-importance is like a prison for us, limiting us to the world of our likes and dislikes …  to train in staying open and curious — to train in dissolving the barriers that we erect between ourselves and the world — is the best use of our human lives.”
I am still learning.
Patricia Heather-Lea
Bristol