Hi Mayka,
I'm sorry, but I have to respectfully disagree. Living zen is not about acting
from feelings of sentimentality. Sentimentality is about seeing the world thru'
rose-coloured glasses and not how things are. If we do that we give
things/actions/people a label or value that isn't real and then become attached
to them. Would Buddha have ever left his family to end people's suffering if he
had not seen thru his sentimental attachment to his family?
You said the last 3 paragraphs contained the moral of Jody's story. Let's take
a look.
>But great moments often catch us unaware-beautifully wrapped in what others
> may consider a small one.
Here's the danger of sentimentality. What isn't a great moment? All moments
just are. If we start labelling and becoming attached to certain moments we
separate ourselves from living in this one moment that we have.. NOW!
> PEOPLE MAY NOT REMEMBER EXACTLY WHAT YOU DID, OR WHAT YOU SAID, BUT
THEY
> WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER HOW YOU MADE THEM FEEL.
You can't do anything about how a person feels about you no matter what you do!
All you can do is be the master of how you feel about them. If you believe you
can do things to make a person feel a certain way about you then you are
certainly setting yourself up for a disappointment and further your suffering.
Remember the 'Serentity Prayer' to accept the things you can't change, to
change the things you can and the wisdom to know the difference.
> Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we
might
> aswell dance.
Again, by hoping for something in the future or for some other situation
different to what we have now, we never truly face this moment and learn to
accept what we have. Why should the taxi-driver be feeling that the old woman's
life is somehow terribly sad and that he was her knight in shining armour?
Maybe she felt she had a good, long life and now was her time to say goodbye to
this life. Should we feel sorry for Muhammed Ali because he has Parkinsons
disease? Or that that Jody is blind? How do we know that they haven't embraced
and accepted what life has dealt them? When we become sentimental we tend to
see the world, and the people in it, the way we think it should be and not how
it actually is.
Mike.
