Floating can be joyful and necessary.
Swimming is more.
Learning how to swim you first learn how to float.
Floating peacefully in a pool, lake or ocean, floating can be enough. Drifting down a river, floating can be enough. Dropped in deep and distressed water, floating can be enough, more than enough, as it keeps you from sinking.
But floating is not swimming. Swimming can take you places that floating won’t.
Learn to float. Train to swim.
Whenever we can connect the Dalai Lama and Jesus, we know we are in the right place.
The Gospel of Thomas, sometimes called the Fifth Gospel, is a collection of sayings of Jesus that parallel and supplement the canonical gospels.
It contains this short and simple direction:
This enigmatic saying for me has the depth of any words in scripture.
Today I came across related wisdom from the Dalai Lama, who makes the same point. Just as Jesus is not offering a limited Christian perspective, the Dalai Lama is not offering a limited Buddhist perspective. It is a fact of human life.
Here the Dalai Lama comments on verses from Shantideva’s The Way of the Bodhisattva.
We are all here on this planet, as it were, as tourists. None of us can live here forever. The longest we might live is a hundred years. So while we are here we should try to have a good heart and to make something positive and useful of our lives. Whether we live just a few years or a whole century, it would be truly regrettable and sad if we were to spend that time aggravating the problems that afflict other people, animals, and the environment. The most important thing is to be a good human being.
Dalai Lama, For the Benefit of All Beings: A Commentary on The Way of the Bodhisattva
Passersby. Tourists. Together.
Note: By coincidence—or is it?—this was created spontaneously today on the 90th birthday of the Dalai Lama.
Knowing it
Some will know it in silence
Some with a word
Some with ten thousand words
Some with a color
Some with a rainbow
Some with a note
Some with a symphony
Some with a picture
Some with a scene
Some here
Some there
Some now
Some later
No word
Or color
Or note
Or picture
Or here
Or there
Or now
Or later
Not know
Bob Schwartz 