The Buddha told a story to his followers in
which a traveler builds himself a raft in
order to cross a wide and turbulent river.
Having made the crossing safely, the Buddha
asks how wise it would be for the fellow to
cling on to that raft and carry it along
the path on his head, just in case he might
need it again at some future time?
He makes the point that his own teachings are
similarly useful for crossing over from one
place to another, but they are not for
holding onto. 'Knowing the dharma to be
like a raft,' he says, 'you should let
go even of skillful qualities, to say nothing
of those that are not.'
It strikes me as an important insight to
recognize that what is helpful and necessary
at one stage in your life can become
burdensome and limiting at a different stage.
This, I would suggest, is why letting go is
such an essential part of any
transformational process.
My daughter was able to overcome her fear of
falling off her bicycle by starting out with
stabilizers. They helped her to get going
but, as she grew in confidence, she realized
that they were in fact slowing her down, and
she had to discard them in order to proceed
to the next level.
I'm sure we often travel through life with the
equivalent of stabilizers on our wheels or a
raft on our
head, having become a little too dependent on
something that helped us to pass through a
certain stage in our development.
After six
years, I still get asked if I have really
given up practicing homeopathy, and it
reminds me of the time when I, too, could not
even imagine such a possibility. Yet I know
now that it was the letting go of that
particular raft
that freed my work to move into other areas.
Sometimes the raft is a learned skill, and at
other times it could be a teacher or a set of
rules, a therapist or a guru, a job or a
lifestyle, a substance or a self-identity.
The fact that it is familiar and was at one
time beneficial seduces us into carrying it
along on our head, occasionally
wondering where that heavy, weighed-down
feeling is coming from.
It is commonplace to associate growth with
increase, accumulation and acquisition, but
this is only one half of the equation.
Letting go, shedding and relinquishing that
which is no longer needed is the other, less
visible part of any growth process. If you
wish to grow, you must let go.
