Emotion

DC (my partner) is traveling to India. We both have a strange mix of emotions. The biggest in my case is worry that he will be ok.

What is it in a long term relationship that sustains over the years? What is the relation of a close, committed, long term relationship to Buddhist practice? I think it was DT Suzuki who when asked about the loss of his wife said that of course it was painful, but that there was no root to the pain.

I think my attachments may be too great to reach such understanding. In any event all I can do is to watch my emotions and try to be authentic, alive and compassionate. I think I'll often miss the mark but practice is in the gap as they say.

I recall this which is favorite both both DC and mine (although I am not familiar with the original text):

‘Grayness could not fill us with despair if our minds did not harbor the concept of different colors, scattered traces of which are not absent from the negative whole.’
(Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 377–8.)

‘Peace is the state of distinctness without domination, with the distinct participating in each other.’
(Adorno, ‘Subject and object’, in The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, ed. Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), 497–511 (p. 500).)

I could use other words for the tile and tag of this post which may or may not alter the readers interpretation. Maybe you can play around with your own frames.