Release

This week I'll be using the Stone Tarot, a self-published deck by Alison Stone. I may also dip into her book of tarot poems (Ordinary Magic), although it wasn't written as a companion book. The oracle I'll be using is the Buddhist Quote Cards, painted and published by Diana Altenburg. Even though she has spiritual quotes (from John Lennon to Lao Tzu) on the back of the cards, I have decided to pair each card with a verse from the Dhammapada (a Buddhist text). Today's draws are the Fool and Dhammapada 15:204:

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

We all start life with a light load, but our innocence and trust take a hit when we tumble off the cliff into the real world. Yet that lighthearted sense of freedom is still carried within us, waiting for us to realize it is relative to that which we cling. As Joseph Goldstein wrote, "The mind of no clinging is open and vast. It is receptive to everything but holds on to nothing." Like the Fool, we can experience life without feeling the need to take everything with us, constantly pulling it all out to feed our worry, anger or sadness. The verse from the Dhammapada reads:

Health is the foremost possession, contentment the foremost wealth, trust the foremost kinship, and release the foremost happiness.

There are things in life that need our attention and deserve our gratitude. But when we find ourselves miserable, we should ask what we are grasping and refusing to release. Is it worth our freedom?