How To Be A Child At Heart

When we were children, we were not afraid of much. Maybe the dark or a bully down the street frightened us, but for the most part the only things we really thought about were wondering how things are, our hopes, and our dreams.

The wonders of the universe:

Although I remember a little bit of my own youth, I am best reminded of it when talking to my children. As little ones, we didn’t understand how anything worked and so we were fascinated by it. There was a certain magic to the world that could only be seen through a child’s eyes. The clouds were amazing, insects were spectacular, and things such as the ocean just blew us away.

My son often asks me how things work and as he tries to make sense of the world, I get urges not to give him a normal answer. There have been times where I have done this and felt pangs of regret as I realized that each question he asks me takes him closer to losing the magic that gives him the fire in his eyes. Children are able to see and hear things that adults are not able to and I am convince it is because their innocence allows them to be open to all perception, whereas our ignorance closes many of its doors.

The reason I bring this up is that as we age and mature, we start to find out how thing work and through our analysis we turn the magnificent magical world into the scientifical ordinary universe. In our quests to understand, we wind up thinking we know too much and forgetting about the magic behind the curtain that drives this wonderful existence.

It is my goal, as I progress down this path of living my dharma, to give up much of that analytical mindset that keeps me from the magic and try to return to the childlike innocence that made the world so wonderful in the first place. It is far too easy to get caught up trying to analyze why things are rather than just appreciate the beauty in everything I see. There is magic in everything around us if we only take the time to look. I’ve often thought that in far less technologically advance times that true magic may have existed because people might have been just innocent to. Maybe it still does exist for those willing to look for and accept it?

Were a Buddha to cross your path today and show you how he could alter the world or your perceptions, would you even be aware enough to see him try?

I’ll leave you with a quote from one of my favorite poets:

To see a World in a grain of sand,
And Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

-William Blake