Letting Go

From one perspective, we must look after our health, but from another side, it is a futile task. We are powerless to stop ageing, we cannot avoid sickness, and we cannot side-step death, no matter what lengths we go to maintain our health.

From one perspective, we need money and resources, but from another side, they bring nothing but trouble; they cause loved ones to fall out, they invite robbers and cheats who bring death and injury in their wake, they make us the object of vendettas and rivalries that can lead us to be scorned and shamed, or even incarcerated or killed.

From one perspective, our families and relatives are so dear to us; from another side, today’s relative becomes tomorrow’s enemy, today’s enemy becomes tomorrow’s relative or friend. When we look over the course of a lifetime, we see that there is nothing fixed or lasting about our relationships.

This is why it is taught to be a practice of bodhisattvas to let go of concerns for this life.

Even long-time friends and relatives one day must part.
Hard-won wealth and possessions must be lost.
The guest, consciousness, from the host body must depart.
Be unconcerned with this life: that is the bodhisattva practice.

Drupon Khen Rinpoche
Macao 2026

(Verse from the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva translated by Ken Holmes, 2001, Kagyu Samye Ling)