thoughts about...
letting go Read Buddhist literature, and you'll probably come across the term ‘grasping’. It refers to the idea of desperately pursuing or clinging to people, objects, situations and so forth. Grasping at things causes negative emotions such as jealousy, inadequacy and fear of loss to arise. We often labour under the illusion that the things we're grasping after will make us happy, but in reality our desperation destroys our inner peace. Worse, clinging to things too tightly can ironically make us more likely to lose them. Imagine you have a partner you're terrified to lose, so you constantly ask for reassurance that they still love you. You feel jealous and afraid when they text other people, becoming upset and moody and maybe even lashing out at your partner. Behaving like this may cause your partner to get fed up and leave the very thing you're most afraid of!
of us cling dogmatically to what we believe and rarely question whether it is true. This can end up hurting everyone involved think parents who disown their children because of their sexuality, for example. Sometimes, we may not be sure what we believe about a certain issue, but we feel the need to form an opinion anyway. And once we've decided, we cling to it, despite our original indifference.
Sometimes we are convinced that we just need to get that job, date that person or move to that place, and all our troubles will be over. We spend ages mourning our lack of these things. But when we get them, we find we still aren't happy. Many of us resist the present by grasping at the way things ‘should’ be. We can't accept our situation because we're so convinced it should be different. This is particularly damaging when we cling to the past, which by definition we can't change. We can never be at peace as long as we are living in a time that no longer exists. Another form of grasping is the need to have opinions. Many
seedling magazine | 44
