Not good, not bad, just is

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I’m often reminded of eating meals at a zen monastery nearby when they always say, not good, not bad, just is.

The negative only feels negative because we place that particular meaning on it. Likewise, the positive only feels positive because we place that particular meaning on it.

But then there’s also the thought (from a different practitioner of Buddhism I know), that the positive only feels positive precisely because we’ve experienced the negative, and vice versa.

The thing is, you can’t have the positive without the negative. The negative make the positive positive. So I’m not going to give you something negative to think about, but I will say, it all really is a matter of perspective.

It then becomes a matter of convincing yourself that it is so. That is truly difficult, but with time and perspective, you truly do begin to see things in a different light (that’s why it’s called perspective I guess).

So, we need to give ourselves time to process things. It may take days, it may take months, it may take years, but in the meantime, things are not good, nor bad, just is.

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