It’s hard to go through a full day without wishing for something. A sample: I often wish that my body was more fit, healthy, that my mind was a kinder, more stable companion, and that I might\u00a0find something entertaining or meaningful to fill\u00a0my time. Even when I stop to meditate, I am not above\u00a0hoping that something great will happen: I will become calm, maybe I’ll bliss out.<\/p>\n
Wishing isn’t a bad thing, but it would be sad if we accepted it\u00a0as the complete story of our life. Meditation offers a chance to step out of the wishing story. By sitting still and paying attention, we can discover\u00a0that most\u00a0of our storytelling (“I’m sick, unhappy, bored, … so I wish …”) is just a story, a passing cloud\u00a0in our mental atmosphere, and that there are aspects of our seemingly imperfect lives that, in fact, are perfect and gratifying just as they are. \u00a0Kevin Kling’s<\/strong>\u00a0beautiful fable\u00a0of The Cracked Pot<\/strong> (On Being, 19 May 2016<\/a>) shows how it is possible to appreciate\u00a0life by looking at it from a new perspective:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n MR. KLING: \u201cBack in the days when pots and pans could talk, which indeed they still do, there lived a man. And in order to have water, every day he had to walk down the hill and fill two pots and walk them home. One day, it was discovered one of the pots had a crack, and as time went on, the crack widened. Finally, the pot turned to the man and said, \u2018You know, every day you take me to the river, and by the time you get home, half of the water\u2019s leaked out. Please replace me with a better pot.\u2019 And the man said, \u2018You don\u2019t understand. As you spill, you water the wild flowers by the side of the path.\u201d And sure enough, on the side of the path where the cracked pot was carried, beautiful flowers grew, while the other side was barren. \u2018I think I\u2019ll keep you,\u2019 said the man.\u201d (full transcript<\/a>, audio<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s hard to go through a full day without wishing for something. A sample: I often wish that my body was more fit, healthy, that my mind was a kinder, more stable companion, and that I might\u00a0find something entertaining or meaningful to fill\u00a0my time. Even when I stop to meditate, I am not above\u00a0hoping that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24,28,11],"class_list":["post-994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gratitude","tag-perfectionism","tag-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=994"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1016,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions\/1016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}