Life is like waves and rainbows

Yesterday, my niece Susan, came to visit the house. She immediately asked me to carry her. She is six years old. I can no longer carry her because her body has grown so big that her weight makes my waist hurt.

Her younger sister is also the same. When she was a baby, I often carried her fat little sister. Currently, her little sister is four years old. Has become a slender and adorable girl. It feels like time has gone by so fast.

Sometimes I feel confuse. I am currently 35 years old. It feels like just yesterday I learned to ride a motorcycle, then ride a sports bike around the city of Jakarta. But now, my back feel hurts when I ride a sportbike for just 15 minutes.

Now I live alone at home. In the past, this house was filled with my busy family. My mother, father, older sister, grandmother, and grandfather live here. Two housekeepers helped us to clean the house and do the laundry. So, the total family in our house is seven people.

My mother, father, grandfather, and grandmother are now dead. My sister currently lives with her husband and two children. The housekeeper who used to help us is also in her hometown. Now I just live alone in this house in silence.

In this solitude and silence, I learned an important lesson in my life. Everything in our life will be lost someday. Nothing is truly eternal. This is the law that never fades in this life.

Life is like a wave. Appears, enlarges, and then disappears. Likewise, what happens in life, we have family and friends who can make us smile, in the end, they are no longer with us. Even thoughts are like that, whether good or bad thoughts are temporary.

Do you think that thoughts are real? No! Our thoughts are not real. We will be confused and dissatisfied if we assume that thoughts are real. Temporary thoughts will only come and then go away. Many people are depressed and stressed in the long term because they are trapped by their thoughts.

Many people have a misunderstanding about life. They think that in life they have something permanent, so they work on it (wealth, position, and enjoyment). If they take a closer look at life, then they see something different. Nothing is permanent in the life we live. Everything will keep changing.

Life is also like a rainbow, it has many beautiful colors. However, when we approach the beautiful rainbow, the rainbow does not really exist, the rainbow is only air with variations in colors reflected by the sun. Even we can't touch the rainbow. So is our identity. Many think that our identity is complete and absolute. Over time, our traits and personalities change. Even our tastes, ways of thinking, and ways of living are changing.

So, waves, rainbows, mind, and self have something in common. It seems as if it is real and fixed, but in reality, it does not have a permanent existence. We have to be aware of this so that we can let it go easily when it changes. You don't have to chase wealth too hard, you don't have to be afraid of losing your position, because wealth and position are like waves and rainbows that seem real but are actually empty. There is but not there because everything changes so fast.

This moment and this moment, I exist. In the next second, I changed. So, in this case, I exist as well as not exist. This continues until the self returns to the creator.

After I studied Zen, it turns out that there is one thing that has not changed, namely the observer who is always aware. He observes all changes that occur in the world as well as in the mind. Do you know who the observer is? He is his true self. This identity has various names, some call it pure consciousness, some call it Buddha-nature, some say God, divine light, Christ within, and so on. Whatever his name, he was never born or died.

Even though the waves rise and fall, a beautiful rainbow appears and then disappears, the mind and self are constantly changing. Pure consciousness is always there to observe any changes that occur. Pure consciousness which has no concept can recognize everything. Life will feel meaningful if we have known the pure consciousness that is within us.

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