I’ve been reading another great book lately and had the perfect test this morning of one of the principles in it. The book is called ‘Buddhism for mothers of small children.’ It was speaking about how we create our own durrka or suffering. An interesting concept I hear you say!!!! Well it spoke about the way our ideals get in the way of us enjoying our reality. The example it gave was a child crying in a supermarket. In reality, there is no right or wrong to the situation, the reality is just that – the child is crying.

We however have an ideal image of our shopping trip with a happy and easy going child, our suffering is caused by this misfit of reality and our expectations. The book suggests we let go of our expectations and simply accept the situation as it is, an impermenant and imperfect state. If we can let go of the angst to ‘fix’ the situation we loose the tension we have ourselves created.

This morning Laura started crying on the way home from our walk, which is not unusual. However this morning (being 8 months pregnant) my stomach was cramping intensly and it was taking all my effort and concentration just to keep walking. When she started crying normally I go into an internal rant about why me and just stop crying for another 5 minutes or here, have a cruskit… anything to ‘fix’ the situation. After reading about how I was creating my own Durrka I told myself that to have Laura not cry was simply my expectation of how the situation should be. Once I accepted that it wasn’t going to be like that and her crying was just that, crying, the tension vanished.

So I was able to make it home, waddling like a 20kg duck, with a peaceful heart simply having let go of my expectations.

Certainly something to think about!!!

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