There is a struggle that many of us seem to be stuck in.

It is a conflict in which we believe we must continue to suffer over our existence. We have bought into the idea that we have to fight to be here. That we must do this to have what we want and to get the love we all crave. Because of this, many of us have fallen out of enchantment with life. We have forgotten that there is an innate magic in being alive.

This necessity for struggle is not what has been taught by wise beings for thousands of years. No, great teachers have been trying to show us for centuries that there is another way to be on this beautiful earth.

Right here, amidst our seemingly exhausting days, there is a peace we can reach if we choose. It is an ever-flowing river underneath the chaos we have built over it. This river is actually the truth of existence, running underneath what we think reality is.

“Shhhhh,” it whispers. “Here’s the secret we have been trying to tell you—reality does not have to be so hard.”

Our life could be more natural and flowing, just as it is. It is about what we choose to accept. Instead of resisting our experience, what if we welcomed all of it? For just as there is pain right here, so is there pleasure.

Samsara is a Buddhist term that we use to describe the endless wheel of suffering we get caught inside. This loop, shall we say, is made up of the continual fight we have with ourselves and our ever-changing lives. This is what the ego does—it resists peace, because it believes it must attempt to control everything.

Buddhists believe life will not stop its cycle of death and rebirth, just like our ego-driven mind will never totally subside in its efforts to gain our attention and power. However, we can train ourselves to find a more expansive experience than the anguish of attempting to commandeer the unpredictability of existence. We can find a place to rest today—one of great, natural peace.

The revered Tibetan meditation master, poet, and scholar, Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche, understood this experience. He wrote beautiful teachings about a place of serenity we can reach in our daily lives. It is a spot we come to when we find the stillness that is always available right here.

This peace is a place of gentleness we arrive at when we choose to observe our lives, rather than getting caught up in them. As we make a decision to rest in our experience, rather than trying to avoid it, we begin to relax. This is the practice of meditation. It is also a state that we can reach if we acknowledge there is a level of ease that arises when we stop trying to make things different than they are.

Have a listen to the video below and a read this beautiful teacher’s poem. This master dedicated his whole life to awakening and understanding the teachings that would be of benefit to all of humanity. He wanted us to know peace was here.

I believe this. I believe freedom from our struggle is found nowhere else but in the present—in the natural flow that we knew before we believed the stories of our crazy minds.

“Rest in natural great peace
This exhausted mind,
Beaten relentlessly
By karma and neurotic thoughts,
Like the unceasing fury
of the pounding waves
In the infinite ocean of samsara.
Rest in the natural great peace.”

~ Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche

~

Author: Sarah Norrad

Image: Flickr/Andréa Portilla

Editor: Yoli Ramazzina