Suffering Buddha

Is he curled up in intense gratitude or profound suffering?

Think about it.

Those two countenances look the same.

 The modern, viral symbol of the practice of yoga is a person sitting crossed leg, serene with their hands in a mudra. We’ve been taught and hold the belief that if you’re not that picture – then you’re not yoga.  The calm picture is far away when we are suffering.  Insisting that calm or flexible is yoga creates separation.

Yoga is the connection that gives us the ability in those moments of suffering to recognize the similarity in those two countenances. Yoga connects that this cataclysmic event is changing our life.  ⁠Suffering a loss of a person, place, or thing gives us the opportunity to recognize that we truly loved what we’ve lost. I’ve known to suffer, curled up, screaming, tearing at my hair, hyperventilating, gagging on my own bile from my stomach clawing its way up into my throat with fear and anger. Finally, I grieved the loss. I understood my part in the events of my suffering, I recognized the innocence of myself and who and whatever was no longer here for me.  I grew compassion. All the things that are in our “possession right now”  – they are temporary and not ours.  Everything I love I’m going to lose and everyone I love is going to die and I’m going to die.  My prayer is: and then what? My answer is love.  I’ve nothing else. 

Yoga has given me the space for maturity. My practice allows me to love more deeply, surrendering to the depth of suffering a loss.  In my needs and desires, with the things I identify with I can cling and thirst with passion, practicing the yoga of loving them while they are coming to me, loving while I hold them,  and profoundly loving them when they slip away. Suffering engenders gratitude. The mercurial nature of reality reminds me that my greatest losses have brought me the sweetest gifts.