Loving Life No Matter What

Loving Life No Matter What

This was the beginning of what would become an earnest search for a place of peace, connectedness, and inner freedom that I could count on, even in the face of life’s greatest challenges. I now call this place “true refuge” because I’ve come to understand that it doesn’t depend on anything outside ourselves—a certain situation, person, cure, or even particular mood or emotion. The yearning for such refuge is not mine, personally; it’s universal. It’s what lies beneath all of our wants and fears. We long to know we can handle what’s coming. We want to trust ourselves, to trust and love this life.

In the Buddhist tradition, the Pali word “dukkha” is used to describe the emotional pain that runs through our lives. While it’s often translated as “suffering,” dukkha encompasses all our experiences of stress, dissatisfaction, anxiety, sorrow, frustration, and basic unease in living. But if we listen deeply, we will detect beneath the surface of all that troubles us an underlying sense that we are alone and unsafe, that something is wrong with our life.

The Buddha taught that this experience of insecurity, isolation, and basic “wrongness” is unavoidable. We humans, he said, are conditioned to feel separate and at odds with our changing and out-of-control life. And from this core feeling unfolds the whole array of our disruptive emotions—fear, anger, shame, grief, jealousy—all of our limiting stories, and the reactive behaviors that add to our pain.

Yet, the Buddha also offered a radical promise, one that Buddhism shares with many wisdom traditions: we can find true refuge within our own hearts and minds—right here, right now, in the midst of our moment-to-moment lives.

We find true refuge whenever we recognize the silent, awake space of awareness behind all of our busy doing and striving. We find refuge whenever our hearts open with tenderness and love. Presence, the immediacy and aliveness and warmth of our intrinsic awareness, creates a boundless sanctuary where there’s room for everything in our life.

That day in Cape Cod, I didn’t know if I could ever be happy living with a future of pain and physical limitation. While I was crying, Cheylah, one of our standard poodles, sat down beside me and began nudging me with concern. Her presence was comforting; it reconnected me to the here and now and to a deeply tender inner presence. After I stroked her for a while, we got up for a walk. She took the lead as we meandered along an easy path overlooking the bay.

In the aftermath of grieving, I was silent and open. My heart held everything—the soreness of my knees, the expanse of sparkling water, Cheylah, my unknown future, the sound of gulls. Nothing was missing, nothing was wrong. These moments of true refuge foreshadowed one of the great gifts of the Buddhist path—that we can be “happy for no reason.”

We can love life just as it is, recognizing that no matter how challenging the situation, there is always a way to take refuge in a healing and liberating presence.

Own Loving Your Life

Own Loving Your Life

1. Make a Joy List. I do this in many of my yoga classes and ask my students to post it somewhere where they can see it.
2. Create mantras for yourself. We do this in my yoga class, as well. Create a phrase or a word and repeat it as often as needed to replace another mantra that no longer serves you, such as “My life sucks” “I am fat” “I am broke,” etc.
3. Laugh when you fall. It is my rule in my class, but start to apply it to real life as often as you can. Develop a sense of humor. Especially about yourself.
4. Be kind.
5. Be grateful for what you have right now AND for what is on it’s way. Say “thank you” in advance.
6. Forgive yourself for not being perfect. No such thing. As my client’s son Will says, “Mom, why isn’t the word perfect extinct since it does not exist?”
7. Do yoga. On and/or off the mat.
8. Find things to be in awe of.
9. Sing out loud, even if badly. Feel free to come to one of my karaoke yoga classes (that was what I was on Good Morning America for).
10. Write poems, even if only in your head.
11. Dance.
12. If you don’t have anything nice to say, you know the deal.
13. Tell someone that you love them. Yes, right now.
14. Take more pictures.
15. Watch Modern Family.

25 Things I Am Still Learning
By Silvia Mordini

As an enthusiastic student of life I continue to challenge myself to embrace curiosity and delight in what an honor it is to keep learning. Here is my list of 25 Things I am Still Learning.

Love is the answer
Truth heals, but it might hurt at first
Collaboration through community expands compassion
Making time for myself is worth the investment
Saying yes stokes possibility
Assume the best
Take fun seriously
Comparison breeds envy and jealousy
Forgiveness is irrational; do it anyway
It’s important to make new friends
It’s important to keep old friends
I will never understand everything
Mistakes are necessary stepping stones
Over trying doesn’t help
Stop making things worse
Hugging makes human beings calmer
Trust myself
Keep learning how to receive
Staying creative and inspired takes effort
Worry wastes energy: Nothing is as bad as it seems
Take time to digest my food
Make time to digest my thoughts (meditate)
Others’ opinions don’t matter as much as my own
Travel: Investing in experience makes you rich
Keep my media diet lean: delete, simplify, unplug

The truth is, we should all aspire to seek out greater knowledge. Using these 25 small daily tune-ups, can help to recalibrate your mind and serve as a means to live in harmony with our families, friends and communities. We are still learning for the benefit of all mankind. This is something Michelangelo understood well. Love yourself, love your day, love your life!

One of my mission statements is to serve and give back as much as I humanly can.

Learning to love my life.