Member-only story
A Measure of Cosmic Pain
I don’t like to eat meat. I watched them slaughter lambs and pigs. I’ve seen it and heard their groans; they could feel death. I left so as to not see death. I just couldn’t stand it. I cried like a baby. Climbed up a mountain and couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was out of breath. I have heard the death of the lamb. I cried while I went up the mountain. I had chosen a mountain with no people. I was afraid of being laughed at.
Vaclav Fomič Nizinskij/ from “Diaries”
*
Overcome any bitterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude of pain that was entrusted to you. Like the mother of the world who carries the pain of the world in her heart, each one of us is part of her heart, and therefore endowed with a certain measure of cosmic pain. You are sharing in the totality of that pain. You are called upon to meet it in joy instead of self-pity.
~Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
*
In 1492, the natives discovered they were Indians, discovered they lived in America, discovered they were naked, discovered Sin existed, discovered they owed allegiance to a king and kingdom from another world and a god from another sky, and this god had invented the guilty and the dress and had sent to be burnt alive whoever worships the Sun and the Moon and the Rain that wets us.
