Remember three things

1. Impermanence surrounds us 

2. There is nothing wrong with this moment.

 3. Gratitude

When we used to go to the Zen Buddhist Temple in our hometown, the resident priest would often begin our meditations with the following statements above. I take great comfort in them when I find myself going through difficult times.

In May we lost our beloved cat Milo to congestive heart failure. As my wife wrote in her beautiful post on the subject of Milo's passing:

Milo’s heart was probably weakened because it was so full of love to give.  In the end, it simply couldn’t contain it all, and he had to depart us, leaving all that love to burst out and into the world.

This was a disorienting moment in our lives as Milo was such a part of our family. Grasping for some kind of stability, I remembered:

1. Impermanence surrounds us - each moment passes and then is done. Our lives are like pages written live in a book; you may go back to see where you have been, but it's no longer being written to at that point - only in the moment; the future is full of blank pages, how many we'll never know. So it comes that any pleasant situation we find ourselves in ends; anyone or anything we love, eventually is no longer with us in a physical sense. It is also true that when we find ourselves in difficult moments, those too pass; and new beings can enter our lives and bring us much joy. Ultimately, we are never stuck and we are never limited to living a life that stops at one particular point of time.

2. There is nothing wrong with this moment - if you're reading this, you're breathing. You're still alive. Even if you are in pain, if you break time down to the individual moment, you have survived each moment of pain. If you can survive one moment, you can survive the next. In the days and weeks after Milo's passing, when it was all I could do to stop from sobbing at my desk, I would comfort myself knowing that I would be able to get through the loss moment by moment.

3. Gratitude - if everything that brings us comfort and joy passes and everything that brings us pain and sorrow passes too, and if we can recognize that when we look at it moment by moment, we're doing ok, then we can be truly grateful to have had our wonderful experiences and likewise equally grateful that those experiences we wish to pass at some point will.  I am grateful for Milo's luminous presence, for his memory that lives on. I am grateful that I was able to remember these three things.