Week of

Chaos on a nationwide scale

On a nationwide scale, people suffer from things like famines and wars; and as individuals, we suffer from various types of chaos in our life. It is happening right now, all the time. Things go wrong, and a lot of chaos happens. It is one thing after another. In the beginning, you may be shocked to see such energy coming your way. But you have to be willing to learn from it. Usually we are so overwhelmed by such happenings that we deliberately put off going into the depths of the psychological aspects of the chaos. Energy might have the pretense of chaos, but you are learning not to be shocked by it.

Fear arises when this energy is not a concrete, definite thing. If we can see something, we feel ready to control it. You can stop somebody from walking in front of you, or you can stop a cat from killing a mouse – in those situations, you can do something directly. But if what is happening is subtle and deep rooted, that energy is very difficult to deal with, because it does not have particular characteristics that you can catch. It has no handles, so to speak, no tail. It is just an all-pervading force. So it is like trying to catch the wind or a rainbow. That makes us afraid and confused.

From Milarepa: Lessons from the Life and Songs of Tibet’s Great Yogi, pages 122 to 123.
Published by Shambhala Publications.

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The CTR Quote of the Week is coming to you from the Chogyam Trungpa Institute at Naropa University. The compiler of the quotes and the moderator of the list is Carolyn Gimian.

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