Daily Buddhist [Wednesday Wisdom]

By Brendan Barca & Pema Sherpa

Age-old Buddhist wisdom for modern living. Weekly insight loved by over 18,000 practitioners. 🙏

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It's All Part of the Path

“It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.” - Ram Dass

There’s an old Zen saying: “Chop wood, carry water.”

This proverb reminds us that the spiritual path is not separate from everyday life. We don’t become wiser by floating above our experiences.

We must take all of our experiences—the good and the bad—as part of the path. This goes for every illness we endure, every bad mood we find ourselves in, and every angry email we receive.

These aren’t problems with life. They’re features of life—things that we all experience.

Look at all the things you go through in a given day. Are they all positive? No. How could they be?

We work. Run errands. Do chores. Navigate relationships. We need to be okay with this.

If we can stop expecting life to be different from what it is, we’ll have taken a small step forward on the spiritual path.

This week, work on letting go of how you think each day should unfold.

Loosen your expectations. Open yourself up to whatever experiences come your way—the “good”, the “bad”, the mundane.

They are all part of the path.

And whatever happens, keep going.

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Brendan & Pema

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