Skip to main content

Holding sand


Frozen sand on the lake in Muurola
My favorite passage in the Bhagwad Gita Chapter 2, verses 62-63. In these verses, the Lord Krishna explains how attachment causes desire, which leads to anger, then confusion, then weakness of memory and intellect and eventual ruin. I try to remind myself of this passage as often as I can, but, as human nature would have it, I often forget and cave to attachments anyway.
Fortunately, fate, the Universe, God—take your pick—has a way of intervening when this happens. Take my most recent reminder that came through a friend. Despite the frustration I was causing him, he patiently explained the reality - a reality I was so adamantly denying because it did not fit into the outcome I wanted. His words stopped the attachment that I had begun to form to an unlikely outcome.
Ever since coming to Finland, I have been trying to take things as they come. I try to not think about whether things will work out or not and focus on just completing the tasks ahead of me. This detachment may be because of the circumstances that brought me here, which were random and unexpected. I applied for the Fulbright grant without particularly thinking about whether I received the grant or not. I wanted a goal to work towards and applying for a Fulbright seemed like a good goal to have. The thought of coming to Finland didn’t occur to me until after I had been accepted.
It has been in those instances when I became too attached to the outcome that things have started to unravel. The situation with this friend was one but there have been several. I expected a conference to go a certain way but was left disappointed when it did not match my expectations. Class assignments or presentations that I was trying so desperately to show off my knowledge or skills with ended up lackluster. I was anxious about making sure my first relationship worked out and it broke apart.
If you hold sand in a fist, it all falls out but if you cup it gently in the palm of your hand you can hold on to a great deal. People and outcomes are the same. If you are too attached to them, you hold them in a fist and they will slip away.
And so I thank this friend for reminding me to stop grabbing the sand in a fist. Even though I didn’t like what he said, I am grateful that he reminded me of the great fall caused by attachment, as outlined by Krishna. I will not stop trying to hold the sand in my hand, but I can at least stop making a fist.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Story time

I want to use this entry to write some of the stories that I think have been important or interesting while here in Finland. They aren't necessarily related to each other or even remotely profound in any way but they are all important to me for various reasons. The first is not even a specific moment but a place and a feeling. Right in front of the cathedral there is a bridge that crosses the Aura River. It is a beautiful bridge, with a cobbled stone path running parallel to the busy street. The cathedral stands tall on one side of the bridge and around it is a small square, also with cobbled stone. On the other side of the cathedral, running all the way along the river to the harbor is a promenade speckled with coffee shops and benches. One day when crossing the bridge I heard the unmistakable sound of bagpipes. Sure enough, there was a man playing them while standing close to the bridge. Hearing him filled me with a sense of gratitude for how many people ...
2 comments
Read more

Summer (Cottage) Fun

This is a very selfish post. I am writing it purely to relive memories because, even though I have absolutely loved being at home for this week, eating my mother’s cooking, meeting friends and remembering what 30 ° (90 ° for my American friends) weather feels like, part of me misses Finland. I probably wouldn’t miss it so much if it weren’t for a weekend trip I took before leaving to a friend’s summer cottage. It was quintessentially Finnish. (And then later that week we made hernekeitto and pannukakku . You can’t get more Finnish than that.) The cottage was tucked away in the middle of woods. Though there were two other cottages not far from ours, we couldn’t see or hear anything from our neighbors, thus giving the illusion that we were completely secluded from the outside world. Cottages are generally located near a body of water, either a lake or the ocean. This cottage was by a lake. It actually belongs to my friend’s mother who spends almos...
1 comment
Read more

Becoming Finnish

I have spent the past six months passionately insisting that I will never join in on the uniquely Finnish experience of ice sauna-ing. Ice sauna-ing is a made up word for one of Finnish people’s favorite past times: going to a sauna and then jumping into a freezing lake. My friend is extremely persuasive and after six months of describing her own sauna-ing adventures managed to get me to agree to join her and her husband at a public sauna near a river. The sauna itself is a small wooden building attached to locker rooms and a common area where you can sit and eat after you are done. The first thing that catches your attention is the bridge going out above the water. Around the bridge the water is freely moving but farther out you can see it is frozen over and covered in snow. At the end of the bridge there are six sets of stairs leading into the water. What arrests the eye though is the people walking out onto the bridge wearing swimsuits and confidently walking straig...
Post a Comment
Read more