Sorrowful Buddha

There is a legend of the Sorrowful Buddha. While walking, Sorrowful Buddha came upon a tigress who was starving and too weak to feed her cubs. In an act of compassion, the Sorrowful Buddha cut himself in two, allowing the tigress to eat and her cubs to live.

For some reason, the image of Sorrowful Buddha came to me. I was sitting with my hands covering my face, just blocking out the light and noise and intrusions. I became aware of how my hands felt and how holding my own face was an act of comfort and compassion. And I became aware that I am exhausted.

I don't think that I am depressed. I don't think that I am hopeless. I don't think that I am self-destructive. I am, maybe, sorrowful.

Not in the sad sense, but in the sense of consumed and enervated. I am tired like the tigress and consumed like the Buddha.

People regularly describe me as larger than life: flamboyant and forceful and big. It may be that the largeness of being me - large ideas, big energies, enormous appetites, grand outputs, huge presence - is just tiring and I naturally seek balance by shutting down and resting. In the past, I would have used whatever energy I have in one of these periods to self-demand that I produce a reason for my listlessness. There simply had to be something causal.

In this one, though, I want to let it be uncomplicated and natural and sweet. I'm allowing myself this as an act of compassion. In the Gestalt of it, I am the Buddha - compassionate and giving, and I am the tigress, famished and weak and in need. The allowing will be an experience of growth and difference, but will be healing and is necessary. I commit to allowing it to happen, not forcing it or manipulating it, just holding my head in my hands and being.