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?

The Foremost Happiness

From the Stone Tarot, the Five of Cups; from the Buddhist Quote Cards, Dhammapada 15:204 :

Though we might be enjoying a lovely day, let five minutes of inconvenience or irritation intrude, and that five minutes is likely where our focus will be aimed for the rest of the day. Just as the full upright cups are in the shadows and the spilled cups are up front and evident, so we humans have a tendency to fixate on what's wrong or unpleasant in life while ignoring what is good and beautiful. This mental track that our mind habitually follows can be changed with mindfulness and patient effort, but it takes a lot of practice. The Dhammapada verse reads:

Health is the foremost possession,

contentment the foremost wealth,

trust the foremost kinship,

and release the foremost happiness.

No one would deny the importance of health, the ability to be content, and trustworthy relationships. But to be truly happy, we must also learn to let go of trying to manipulate reality until it fits our ideas of what it should look like. As the Five of Cups card alludes to, such a delusion will only keep us from seeing what is good and beautiful around us.