Part Three: Attachment and Unmanageability

Being able to manage one's life is an illusion, smoke and mirrors.

Buddhism tells me that attachment and aversion create suffering, and the best I can do is eliminate the desire. Just sit with the situation, accepting what is happening and interacting with the world in a position of neutrality. The outcomes and destinations are not as important as the journeys.

So, we try not to have a higher power, in the sense that we do not try to steer towards outcomes that give us pleasure, or away from those that give us pain. I do not delude myself that being kind to another guarantees reciprocation; but I also DO try to be kind, to plant the seed of compassion. Similarly, I try to pay my bills in a timely fashion, because this will likely reduce my suffering in the future - calls from bill collectors are not much fun.

I use my higher power(s) to guide my life; but I watch how those powers transmute my life. Even then, my correlations may be faulty, at times, and what I might blame on one guide may, in reality of some other area shaping my life.

Why did I write this? Because I feel that depending on higher powers will not eliminate all of our lives' unmanageability.