Mark Forstater's Blog

A Cultivator’s Diary Pt 7 (from my journals 2008)

January 2, 2014 at 2:24 pm Leave a comment

March 21, 2008

Woke this morning wanting to read again about Cheng Man Ching’s idea of accepting loss and accepting pain, since this is what I have to do, in fact what I feel I have now done. No more anger, no more bitterness, no more regrets, now these need to be transformed into compassion for the Pythons, for their ignorance.

Also reminded of Richard Sennett’s ‘corrosion of character’, about dealing with failure. He says there are many books about achieving success but few about coping with failure. We have to buy into our failure in the same way that Cheng says buy into your pain and loss- they are all the same thing. Accept your failure, incorporate it into your body and mind, let it become part of you, but not to let it distort you. To make loss, pain and failure streams that flow into the ocean of your strength and therefore can’t harm it or alter it but only add to it.

That which does not destroy you makes you stronger.

Entry filed under: My Old Journals. Tags: Cheng Man Ching, corrosion of character, failure, loss, pain, Richard Sennett, success.