Is That So?

I don't know how many times I've said something like, "It's a struggle to stay positive when I'm being bombarded with negativity..."

I recently realized that "struggling to stay positive" is much like "f*cking to stay a virgin." It doesn't make sense... and the more I contemplate it, the less it adds up.

So what does make sense? How would one deal with negativity in a positive way? The answer is not resisting or allowing it to influence you.

I'm still working on it... haven't perfected the skill quite yet... but I have a better understanding of the working concept...

The Zen Master Hakuin lived in a town in Japan. He was held in high regard and many people came to him for spiritual teaching. Then it happened that the teenage daughter of his next-door neighbor became pregnant. When being questioned by her angry and scolding parents as to the identity of the father, she finally told them that he was Hakuin, the Zen Master. In great anger the parents rushed over to Hakuin and told him with much shouting and accusing that their daughter had confessed he was the father. All he replied was, "Is that so?"

News of the scandal spread throughout the town and beyond. The Master lost his reputation. This did not trouble him. Nobody came to see him anymore. He remained unmoved. When the child was born, the parents brought the baby to Hakuin. "You are the father, so you look after him." The Master took loving care of the child. A year later, the mother remorsefully confessed to her parents that the real father of the child was the young man who worked at the butcher shop. In great distress they went to see Hakuin to apologize and ask his forgiveness, "We are really sorry. We have come to take the baby back. Our daughter has confessed that you are not the father." "Is that so?" is all he would say as he handed the baby back over to them.

The Master responds to falsehood and truth, bad news and good news, in exactly the same way: "Is that so?"

He allows the form of the Moment, good or bad, to be as it is and so he does not participate in the human drama of the "superior/inferior" stories of ego.

Events are not personalized. He is nobody's victim. He is so completely at one with what happens that what happens has no power over him anymore.

Only if you resist what happens are you at the mercy of what happens, and the world will determine your happiness and unhappiness.