Let’s begin with the First Noble Truth—not as an idea, but as a vibration.
A vibration that every body carries. A whisper that every soul has heard.
The Buddha called it Dukkha.
Now, many translate that as “suffering.” But I want to go deeper.
Dukkha is the feeling of instability. It is the ache that comes when the soul forgets that everything… everything is changing.
We crave joy, and it shifts.
We crave peace, and it stirs.
We crave health, and the body bruises again.
I once wrote in my journal:
“If my body is sick, I long for a time that it will be healthy—and yet stagnate in the dream of expectancy rather than receiving.”
Have you ever lived in that dream? That “someday” healing?
That longing for a moment that doesn’t hurt, doesn’t move, doesn’t change?
But here’s the dharma:
Nothing fixed can stay.
And that’s not a flaw. That’s divinity in motion.
In the Samyutta Nikaya, the Buddha said:
“Birth is Dukkha. Aging is Dukkha. Death is Dukkha… Not getting what we want is Dukkha. Getting what we want… and watching it change—also Dukkha.”
The pain, dear family, is not in the change itself.
It is in our resistance to that change.
It is in the illusion that we are the riverbank…
when we are, in truth, the river.
The wise do not grip the fleeting
Krishna speaks to this in the Bhagavad Gita:
“As the soul passes from childhood to youth to old age, so also it passes at death to another body. The wise are not bewildered by this.” (2.13)
You see, the wise one does not clench.
The wise one does not grip the fleeting.
The wise one breathes with the wave—not against it.
And you and I?
We’ve been gripping—gripping our thoughts, our bodies, our healing timelines.
Even our “spiritual progress.”
Even sadness belongs to the sacred
I confess:
I used to believe my thoughts weren’t God-thoughts unless they were peaceful.
I believed my health wasn’t holy unless it was whole.
But the deeper I sink into silence…
The more I see:
Even my sadness belongs to the sacred.
Let me ask you this:
What if healing doesn’t come from control…
But from consent?
What if your bruises don’t need fixing…
They need blessing?
The medicine of surrender
The Yoga Sutras offer a key. Patanjali says:
“Ishvara-pranidhanaad va.” “Or, by surrender to God, samadhi is attained.” (1.23)
This is the ultimate medicine: not fighting the river, but flowing with God.
Not managing impermanence, but marinating in it.
Not fixing your life, but falling in love with it.
I wrote this recently:
“The river does not crave stillness—yet I, the ripple, plead for it.” “Even longing is impermanence. Even desire for healing is a wave that forgets it is the sea.”
Float with the waves
My friends,
May we stop picking at the scabs of our soul.
May we stop pacing the shore, waiting for calm.
And instead,
Let’s float.
Float with the changing moods.
Float with the body as it breaks and renews.
Float with the people who enter and exit our lives like holy weather.
From the unreal to the Real
The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad offers this prayer:
“Asato ma sad gamaya Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya Mrityor ma amritam gamaya” “From the unreal, lead me to the Real. From darkness, lead me to Light. From death, lead me to Immortality.”
But immortality, my loves, is not a place where the body never bruises.
It is the place where the soul stops resisting the bruise.
That’s where real peace lives.
That’s the healing that doesn’t require force.
That’s the medicine of moksha, samadhi, surrender.
Closing Invocation
So I leave you with this invocation:
Speak it aloud with me if you feel moved.
Let this moment be as it is. Let my body be exactly as it is. Let my thoughts float like clouds, without needing to change them. Let the river flow—because I am the river. I am the healing. I am the motion. I am the mystery. And I am already whole.