I lost everything!

Have you ever lost everything?

Earth has been rotating around the sun for billions of years. Life here has arisen, fallen, evolved, and many of earths past life forms now cease to exist. All things are impermanent, and in a constant state of change.

Everything will be lost from existence eventually. Change is certain, and nothing can be done to stop it.

Nature has played a big part in the changes on our planet. Nature’s movement can cause flooding in some places, and drought in others. These extreme changes in weather can devastate the vegetation in the area affecting not only the human population, but all other life forms that depend on it as well.

Storms of more violent intensity such as tornados and hurricanes will wreak havoc on the landscape as well, with devastating results. These storms can completely level whole neighborhoods making them unrecognizable.

The media always shows up there expeditiously to report on the situation… They love gloom and doom stories. The media always seems to find people who tearfully relate how they just “Lost Everything”. Their homes were destroyed, and everything in them has been blown who knows where.

I feel sorry for them, not because of their loss, but because they believe that the loss of impermanent material possessions that they have acquired is, “losing everything”.

They are still alive, and their families are still alive as well. In most cases they have insurance to cover their losses, and they still have money in the bank. Yes, it is a major inconvenience, and a great loss, but it is not losing everything.

They are now emotionally compromised due to their perceived monumental loss.

Their Monkey Minds jump around to thoughts of the past, and they choose to focus on memories of their past possessions. Now they are suffering because of their dissatisfaction over the loss of their possessions. (Why should I let go of my attachments?)

It is their attachment to material things, and their discontentedness over the loss of impermanent things that is the true cause of their suffering, not the loss itself. Buddha taught in his Four Noble Truths that suffering is caused by attachment.

Before I relocated from America to Thailand, my apartment was filled with my possessions, some of which I have had for twenty plus years. I started going through all of my belongings to determine what I was going to bring along with me to Thailand.

I gave away, sold, or donated everything that would not fit into one carry on, and one check in suitcase for my flight to Thailand. It hurt to part with many of the things that I was attached to in the past, but now I know they all were never meant to be with me forever.

Now even the things that I brought with me, I have no attachment to, therefore their loss can cause me no discontent, no suffering. I have let go of my attachment to them, they cannot control my emotional state. I am free of any dukkha emanating from their loss.

We must accept the law of impermanence, and let go of our attachments to our possessions. If we believe that we have lost everything upon losing our possessions than we will suffer throughout our existence here on Earth.

We must try to let go of our attachments. Our internal suffering is always caused by our desire to want things to be permanent when in fact they are not.

We all want things to be permanent when they are not, and never can be. If everything remained the same and never changed, life would be dull, and boring. We need change to happen for us to evolve and grow.

When you are at the end of your life, will you think about the possessions that you lost, or will you think about the lives that you have changed?

The only moment we can control is the present. The past is over, it was just a lesson, it was not meant to be a lifetime of punishment. The choice is only yours. Will you choose to grow, or will you choose to suffer? Don’t let past mistakes or negative situations ruin your peacefulness in the present.

Losses come to us in many forms. The loss of a loved one, loss of our property, and loss of trust in someone we thought we could depend on. Life goes on from the past, into the future.

Severing the chain of our attachment to material things, and existence is one of the Ten Fetters blocking our path to enlightenment.

Did you truly lose everything, or did you wisely learn to let go?

Previous Article:
Unless you make peace with the past, you won’t have a future.

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I lost everything!

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