Grief, the gate of joy.
morning message from emptiness
<Non-duality of grief and joy>
When I was young, there was an old man who came to my neighborhood to fix a Nickel silver pot once a month.
The old man rubbed the pot with sandpaper hard to make the hole rough, then added another piece of metal and filled the hole. He said that the two different pieces do not stick well unless the area around the hole is roughened with sandpaper.
This morning I looked at the source of sadness.
Grief is like sandpapering my heart.
When the boundary meets the rough surface of sandpaper, something peels off and it can no longer maintain its original clear border.
If left untouched, the wound will lose its purpose, become covered with a rough crust, and leave resistance to indescribable bitterness.
However, the wounded surface experiences other pieces that come and cover and fill in the hole.
Wounds are a minimal tool to make a connection.
Wounds are a wonderful blessing that life brings to humankind, each with their own boundaries.
I live with my own smooth and clear boundaries, and sooner or later I realize that there is a hole in the surface of boundary.
The happiness I so desperately wanted to contain leaks out through the hole, and strange things such as unwanted people and events come and go around the hole, causing friction.
Friction leaves wound and it hurts.
Grief creeps in.
The root of this sadness is the anxiety and fear that my own boundaries have been broken and that I will not be able to protect myself completely.
I resist this bitter and painful feeling.
The stronger the resistance, the deeper the sorrow.
I learned this morning that resistance can no longer drive away sadness.
It is useless in spite of consuming a lot of energy.
I found that no resistance would help heal wounds and strengthen my vulnerability.
The greater the resistance, the more fearful the world becomes, and I am lost in anxiety eventually.
This morning, a very foreign piece of metal was superimposed on my wound. The piece had very different properties from what I thought it was.
I put down resistance.
It was just stacked for a moment and flowed away in the wind.
Soon the wounds dulled the pain of bitterness and turned into something dignifiedly bearable.
As the pain of the wound was neutralized, the sadness disappeared.
A different piece of metal was attached to my scrubbed surface and a new peace came to me.
Sadness was not a real entity. If sadness was a reality, it cannot disappear in the moment when circumstances and events have not changed at all.
Grief simply means the frustration of my pitiful desire to keep my boundaries safe.
The desire to be safe is a common attribute of all living things, and there is no right or wrong in itself.
However, it remains worthy whether it works or not.
Can you resist sorrow and drive it away?
Can the wound be healed by struggling with the pain caused by the wound?
These are still important questions for the people in grief and wound.
I shed resistance this morning and witnessed the death of resistance.
When the resistance died, sorrow and wounds went into the tomb like a burial.
The extinction of the “I” is the death of resistance.
Where the resistance dies, a tight chemical bond of different properties between different people begins.
Wounds are the first gateway to the path of non-duality, and grief is the process by which the boundaries of foolish darkness are dismantled.
Sorrow is the disappointing lament of one who seeks to divide and rule the individuals.
This morning, Sadness becomes joy.
Opening the gate of grief, I stepped into the vague feeling which led me the center of joy at last.
What a beautiful superimposition!
