Renouncing Stress

I used to be a stress junkie. I used to work in corporate IT. I helped to deploy and maintain mission critical business systems. If the computer system went down, business ground to a halt and all kinds of very bad things happened and lots of blame and anger ensued. I loved being so important.

Now I have completely renounced stress and coffee and I have embraced slacking and sleeping.

Our lives are rife with hope and fear. EVERY little thing in our lives is a source of stress. Can you name anything that is not a source of stress? Even fun things, like these Charles David sandals on bluefly.com, are a source of stress. Can I afford them? While wearing them, I'll have to be constantly careful so I don't scuff them up.

We say and do all sorts of things in frustration, blame, and anger because we are stressed. But you can have the right answers and still be wrong. Right answers and wrong answers are really just ideas on the relative level. So aren't they really part of this grand delusion that is samsara? What's really important are your fellow human beings. Those people standing right in front of you. Besides, getting upset is, well, so stressful :-)

We can sometimes have so many grandiose ideas about our work, our goals, our mission in life. My last job was working for the Buddhist group to which I belong. I completely missed the irony of my having so much hope and fear about contributing to the work of my Buddhist teacher, whose life's work is to free our minds of hope and fear.

The end doesn't justify the means. In Buddhism, I think the means are the end.