Change is Inevitable, Awareness is Eternal - Ram Dass

so we are living in times of in interesting times remember the chinese curse may you live in an interesting time the question is whether it's a curse or a blessing see it's a curse if you're afraid of change it's a blessing if you can use change to free yourself from your identification with that which changes see i really see it as a blessing i mean i look at this body which is now decaying at a deliciously interesting rate i mean you can almost notice it from day to day you know and there's all these big

veins and wrinkles and little marks and spots and i mean this is beauty if i look at it as a beautiful old hand if i impose upon that all of my social structures conscious my conceptual things but that's my hand that means i am wrinkles and blood vessels and look at how much i value the absence of wrinkles and blood vessels am i ready for this is it going to be anxiety now is this less beautiful so the question is is change beautiful is what changes part of the beauty of nature and are you part

of the beauty of nature and can you allow the changes and delight in them and look for the wisdom inherent in each change rather than resisting it can you work to preserve your body and at the same time be ready to let it go rilkus says the most remarkable thing is to be able to hold death and continue to live to be able to be at peace with the way of things by cultivating the part of yourself that isn't you anymore but is which has nothing to do with time and space birth and death coming

and going loss and gain fame and shame pleasure and pain which ones are you ready for somebody gave me this xerox it says if you aren't happy once upon a time there was a non-conforming sparrow who decided not to fly south for the winter however soon the weather turned so cold that he reluctantly started to fly south in a short time ice began to form on his wings and he fell to earth in a barnyard almost frozen cow passed by and crapped on the little sparrow the sparrow thought it was the end but the manure

warmed him and defrosted his wings warm and happy able to breathe he started to sing just then a large cat came by and hearing the chirping investigated the sound the cat cleared away the manure found the chirping bird and promptly ate him the moral of this story won the three morals everyone who shits on you is not necessarily your enemy number two everyone who gets you out of the [ __ ] is not necessarily your friend and number three if you're warm and happy in a pile of [ __ ] keep your mouth shut so

partly this decaying body and all of this and the ecological stuff and the trees and the this and that and the violence and all it's a pile of [ __ ] now are you warm and happy it's interesting as to whether you can be happy and then act or you will only can only act in order to sometimes be happy to finally be happy like i can't be happy unless all the loggers starve to death i put it in terms you won't like of course we all understand what that debate is about i won't be

happy until the social systems of which i'm apart are just now the question is is my lack of happiness in the process a help to the realization of the goal in other words if i would like to live in a happy world maybe what i could contribute is happiness but if i set the condition i can only be happy if i get a happy world i mean i go to truth ra i mean peace rallies and i hope they'll be truth rally sometimes but there are now there are now peace rallies and there are such

angry people at them i can't believe it gotta have peace now yeah i don't want to know you man i'm putting up my walls i'm of the school that if this pile of [ __ ] isn't good enough i'm in trouble i'm in deep [ __ ] and can it be good enough and i can also work like hell to turn it into what i see is possible a just and compassionate world are those incompatible if you saw it as perfect would you then not do anything what would the perfection include would it include the

truth of your heart the truth of your heart is that when somebody hurts you hurt because we're all us it's interesting how you deal with suffering and the way in which you distinguish between your own suffering and somebody else's suffering so you may get to the point in your spiritual work while where you don't invite suffering when it comes along you work with it because the only reason you're suffering is because your mind has attractions and aversions otherwise it's just change the value imposition has to do with the attachments of mind but if somebody says

i want to be free of suffering then i've got to help them be free of what they experience as their suffering even though i know that when they get free of that suffering they're going to have another suffering and what i would love to be doing is getting free of the source of the issue of suffering itself the basic ignorance which is what the dharma is about the dharma is designed to get rid of the basic ignorance from which suffering arises like a seed from which a plant comes up and it's the ignorance basically of

separateness not that separateness isn't part of the dance but our identification with our separateness that's where the source of the suffering is sorry next lifetime you'll understand i think the game is to bear the unbearable with a giggle with your heart breaking and then do what you do i think you should trust your inner wisdom that out of you would come actions not out of ought or should but out of the essence of what is if you distrust the compassion of your heart then you have to get caught in the odds and shoulds if you

don't distrust it you just have to surrender into it and it will take care of it what needs to be taken care of the statement in the dao one does nothing and nothing is left undone meaning you're getting very tired being somebody doing something and there's a whole other way of being in which you are the thing itself and whatever happens happens it's the compassion that arises out of emptiness it's the discriminating wisdom that you see when you stop trying so hard to be good to be right to be just to be compassionate i mean

more violence is done in the name of being compassionate basically everybody thinks they're good in one way or another very few people who think they're evil to live with the uncertainty to live with not knowing with knowing you are living at the edge of the mystery all the time you and i don't really know about death somebody handed me another i'm going to live on people's handouts faith faith is when you have come to the edge of all the light you know and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown faith is

knowing one of two things will happen there will be something solid to stand on or you will be taught how to fly under that is a fortune cookie cartoon that says which the fella is asking the waiter may i have another fortune cookie i'd like a second opinion see i live with the mystery and with incredible faith it's the clear discriminating awareness from which perfection just spreads before you all of it