Isn’t there a song that goes “the waiting is the hardest part?” Tom Petty I think and, as with most pop songs and cliches there’s something so obviously true about it that pointing it out seems superfluous. Nonetheless, I find myself waiting here in my apartment for the exterminators to come and seal up mouse holes and for a cleaning lady to come and clean whatever mice poop and pee we may have missed. The last six months have been witness to a brutal and continuous rodent assault and we are constantly doing all we can to stay on top of the problem. Sometimes I feel like someone must have tipped the mice off that we’re Buddhist because they don’t seem to be bothering any of our neighbors but have instead decided to take up residence with us knowing we won’t try to kill them. So, in what has become an almost bi-weekly ritual, I am sitting in my living room with all the furniture pulled from the walls and the rugs hanging hither and tither awaiting these guys who may very well never show.
At this point I could let desperation set in and allow myself to be carried along by the stream of self-pity but, somehow, I manage to recall that even while waiting we are not safe from the cold grip of death. In the light of death this waiting takes on another form altogether and I am able to accept things with gratitude and take frustrations in stride knowing that my mind will, in this way, be at peace if the end should come with the next in-breath.
May we never wait to purify our minds. May we awaken to the fragility of life with each in and out breath!
Related articles
- The Waiting is the Hardest Part (suburbanchristianity.wordpress.com)
- Capacity For Waiting (quotelife.wordpress.com)
Cattāri Brahmavihārā 
Leave a comment