{"id":728,"date":"2006-06-07T04:23:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-07T04:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2006\/06\/buddhism-life-facing-it\/"},"modified":"2006-06-07T04:23:00","modified_gmt":"2006-06-07T04:23:00","slug":"buddhism-life-facing-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2006\/06\/buddhism-life-facing-it.html","title":{"rendered":"Buddhism & Life: facing it"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This is partly in response to a conversation with a friend about her life these days. It\u2019s about times in life when we come to ask fairly large questions about ourselves, our paths, our relationships, and so on. It\u2019s probably a lot like a mid-life crisis \u2013 only I tend to see it in people much, much younger \u2013 in their 20s or 3os. That\u2019s probably a sign that they\u2019re a bit quicker than the poor sobs who wait \u2019till their 45 to start asking questions.<\/p>\n

But when a life question comes up, as it will do for everyone (you, me, Donald Trump, and the Dalai Lama), we have two choices:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Avoid it (become an \u2018x\u2019-aholic, a sports fanatic, and wait for it to go away), or<\/li>\n
  2. Face it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    People who prefer the first option sound something like this, \u201cwhen I\u2019m working all the time things are ok, it\u2019s just when I start to think about life that things suck.\u201d This is a tragic outlook on life, made more tragic by how prevalent it is in our society.
    <\/span><\/p>\n

    In Buddhism<\/a> there\u2019s the story of the potter who\u2019s working away,
    happy as can be (or at least not unhappy), making jars and vases and what not, one after another. He didn\u2019t sell many, but did well enough to get by. One day someone came by and said, \u2018hey, you\u2019re [potter\u2019s] wheel is lopsided and it has made all your jars and vases lopsided too.\u2019 The potter got pretty angry and frustrated, maybe even a bit depressed. He was doing fine, but now what? He could stop his work and fix the wheel, which would take some work, but lead to making straight jars and beautiful vases, or he could avoid it and just get by with the lumpy ones.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    We need to fix the wheel. There are a million answers to the question \u2018how?\u2019 \u2013 and I don\u2019t know that any one of them is necessarily better than all others. In life what is needed is less a map and more a compass. There are no predetermined destinations or universal landmarks here, but as long as our \u2018life compass\u2019 points toward \u2018more genuine caring for other people\u2019<\/strong> then we\u2019re going the right way.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This is partly in response to a conversation with a friend about her life these days. It\u2019s about times in life when we come to ask fairly large questions about ourselves, our paths, our relationships, and so on. It\u2019s probably a lot like a mid-life crisis \u2013 only I tend to see it in people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nBuddhism & Life: facing it<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This is partly in response to a conversation with a friend about her life these days. 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