Blue sky BeiJing 北京

[May 15th 2017] Heat-wave ahead !

Summer is hotting up in BeiJing this week - into the high 30s C (90s F in old money).

Keep cool (keep hydrated), be cool (sensible, giving and creative), keep in touch (we love your feedback and input), and above all - love life (live more; BE love) ...

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To have and to be - huh ?

The two big verbs - to have and to be ...

Thinking through this seemingly abstract concept could change your life, for the better. Two very different ways to live; or rather - really live or not really live.

To have is good, to a point; but can be a holding onto more than we really need, and a baggage of the past dragged into the future that prevents us living in the real now. For what we 'have' is not just physical stuff - it is also the clutter and beliefs in our mind.

To be, is to live, free of the past and all that we 'have' (and 'know'). Live more ... be more ...

Listen less (to others and beliefs), and look more (and think more, based on what is, not on what you have heard).

Someone once said that to love is much better than to be loved; to give so much better than to receive (have); and so it is with to have and to be ... To be is the way.

Everything taken, comes to an end. Everything given ripples through time for an eternity.

To ask for nothing, and give all - that is love.

To be, not to have.

~~~

You might like to read Erich Fromm's To Have or To Be, and The Art of Love, which also explore this concept, and is essentially what the Buddha told us. Easy read; concise and potent.

Also good reading : Jiddhu Krishnamurthi - for example, Commentaries on Living (three easy read volumes), and Alan Watts - for example, The Way of Zen.

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