AN INNOCENT MISUNDERSTANDING – Pema Chodron

Brown Leaves About to Let Go (c) Harold Blum

“When the Buddha taught, he didn’t say that we were bad people or that there was some sin that we had committed—original or otherwise—that made us more ignorant than clear, more harsh than gentle, more closed than open. He taught that there is a kind of innocent misunderstanding that we all share, something that can be turned around, corrected, and seen through, as if we were in a dark room and someone showed us where the light switch was. It isn’t a sin that we are in a dark room. It’s just an innocent situation, but how fortunate that someone shows us where the light switch is. It brightens up our life considerably. We can start to read books, to see one another’s faces, to discover the colors of the walls, to enjoy the little animals that creep in and out of the room.”

– “Precision, Gentleness, and Letting Go” in
The Wisdom of No Escape, page 13

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Such a more positive way to understand ourselves and our foibles, our weaknesses, our flaws. Aho.