13/10/2025
💫 The Reality of Life
Recently, I listened to a teaching by my beloved teacher, Jigme Khyentse Rinpoche, son of the great Tibetan master Kangyur Rinpoche.
He shared how, as a child, he didn’t want to look at the dead bodies that his father received at home for final rituals.
His father never protected him from reality and simply asked,
“Why not? Everyone dies.”
That story touched me deeply.
It made me realize how, in our culture, we often hide from life’s reality —
and how this shaped me deeply as a child.
We welcome birth with joy, yet turn away from death,
as if one belongs to life and the other does not.
As if joy is accepted, but pain is not.
Our whole life is spent reaching for what we desire
and rejecting what we do not want.
This constant movement between the two
is the very ground of suffering.
I see now how important it is that my own children are not protected from reality.
This doesn’t mean exposing them to suffering with force,
but when they ask about war, sickness, suffering, or death,
I try not to hide the truth —
not to make life heavier,
but to make it real.
Because what we avoid doesn’t disappear.
It simply waits —
and will continue to find ways to be seen.
And as the great Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh teaches:
We need the mud for the lotus to grow —
just so we need suffering for true happiness to unfold.
🪷Jeanine
