Letting Go

 

Two monks were returning to the monastery in the evening. It had rained and there were puddles of water on the road sides. At one place a beautiful young woman was standing unable to walk across because of a large puddle of water. The elder of the two monks immediately went to her, lifted her in his arms and left her on the other side of the road, and continued on his way to the monastery.

In the evening, the younger monk could no longer contain himself and he went to the elder monk and said, “Sir, as monks, we cannot touch a woman”  The elder monk answered “Yes, brother”.  Then the younger monk asked, ” but then Sir, how is it that you lifted that beautiful woman on the roadside?”

The elder monk smiled at him and said, “I left her on the other side of the road, but are you still carrying her? “

This is one of my favorite little Zen stories as it outlines a very unique and oftentimes toxic trait of the human mind.  Many times, we become attached to an event that happens in a brief moment of time, and feel a need to breathe life into it and keep it present within our minds even though the event no longer has a physical existence.

Sometimes, I think a part of us embraces negative emotion in order to validate our anger, pain and judgment that we have been wronged by others.  It is as if keeping a problem alive helps to convince us that we are not responsible for the event and that we have been victimized by some terrible outside force.

A powerful practice I like to engage in, with people I know who are suffering from stress is to ask them if they trust me enough to hold onto their problem for one night.  I promise to return it back to them on the next morning, but I ask them to let it be my problem and insist that they get some rest as I hold the problem for them.  It might sound like a simple idea, but you would be surprised at how easily people will completely release a problem to you and suddenly feel a huge weight lifted off their shoulders.

As we increase our understanding of our own ability to attach and detach ourselves from negative events, we can also learn to effectively set down our own problems for an evening and pick them up the next morning when we are better prepared to face them.  I sometimes laugh at myself, because when I realize I am feeling stress from an event, a part of my mind asks me, “Do you want to walk down that road of negativity or just let this go?”  And, most often for me, that is the end of my stress and I am completely free to focus on other things.

I encourage you to develop your ability to take your negative emotion and “set it down on the other side of the road”.  Negativity is born from within and has no origin outside of you.  Take some time to reflect on this truth and try putting this principle into practice.  Develop your ability to let go.