Sorrow Held By Compassion

I have been very sad the past couple of days. A lot is going on in my life. We are moving. I have to pack, leave somewhere I was comfortable, start again somewhere new. Same thing in my spiritual life. I have found something different than I had been practicing before. I have left behind many of my old comfortable ideas. I am striking out on a new path. Along with that, most of my friends are very busy with school and the holidays. I always feel alone. I spent a great deal of time by myself wondering where I'm going, what I'm doing, if anyone notices that I'm hurting.

I switched blogs because I no longer wanted to spew venom at life and the world. I still have a great deal of pain in my heart and soul but that is the state of being human. I think I just tend to be more sensitive to it than most. Some will push it aside. Myself, it knocks me down and leaves me shaking and lost. Sensitivity is not normally associated with strength, which is reserved for the warriors of emotions who downplay anything negative and soldier on stoically. Well, sensitivity requires enormous strength if you don't let it break you. And if you don't solely focus it inwards, it provides you with insight into all the other beings you share the world with. This is the approach I attempt to take.

Lonely. Namu-Amida-Butsu. Sad. Namu-Amida-Butsu. Confused. Namu-Amida-Butsu. Gratitude for the endless compassion of the Buddha of the Infinite Light. I do not have to wait until death to see his Pure Land. I do not even have to wait until my mood improves. The Pure Land is in my suffering. Amitabha grasps me ever closer in my heartbreak and I speak the Name out of gratitude for that compassion beyond compassion, that love for me as for an only child, a wayward child in pain. He doesn't take the pain away. But he feels it with me, even more keenly than I do, for infinite compassion feels a finite pain infinitely. And thus he keeps his vows. Nothing needs to change miraculously. Nothing needs to suddenly get better. I do not need to beat this sadness and get a big smile back on my face. I just need to live, keep living, in this broken world, in this perfect Pure Land. When I transcend all illusion and all suffering, my compassion and my sorrow will be an ocean like his and my peace will be unshakeable. And the only difference will be, I will see that it was me all along and he waited for me to find that out.