Enlightenment

Who, me?

 

Nah!!

 

But really, I did have a moment of enlightenment yesterday, it was brief, fleeting if you will!

I was researching religions for my story (no, I really was having fun) and while doing a bit of reading up on Buddism I realised something. See I have known quite a bit about Buddism from my family, most the female members, so its ideas are not wholly unknown to me. However I have never really sat down and studied its teachings before.

It has four noble truths:

1. Life as we know it ultimately is or leads to suffering/uneasiness (dukkha) in one way or another.
2. Suffering is caused by craving or attachments to worldly pleasures of all kinds. This is often expressed as a deluded clinging to a certain sense of existence, to selfhood, or to the things or phenomena that we consider the cause of happiness or unhappiness.
3. Suffering ends when craving ends, when one is freed from desire. This is achieved by eliminating all delusion, thereby reaching a liberated state of Enlightenment (bodhi);
4. Reaching this liberated state is achieved by following the path laid out by the Buddha.

 

Number two really hit me. When I was planning on buying Ocean, I was oppressed with all the problems assosiated with having to spend that amount of money and all the time I would have to spend with him conditioning and whatnot. After the ride when I decided I did not want to buy him, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my chest, I felt so much better.

I realize now that I was pushing myself towards the goal of Endurance because I felt that I would have no direction in my life without it and that Lucy would never be useful in that respect. I thought that I wanted to be busy caring for an athlete and conditioning him, now however I am realizing that after all I went through with both mares I just was to relax and enjoy my horses quietly.

 

Anyway, thats my philosophical post of the week!