A couple of things come up for me, thinking about balance. One is from early days getting to know Doshu, we often spent time in playgrounds on the teeter totter. What he taught me was that the farther out you are on the arm of the teeter totter, the more power you have. As any child with an older brother will know, the temptation to misuse one's power on a teeter totter is overwhelming. Lessons learned here with simple physics have a myriad applications in everyday life, and so we were able to balance our disparate weights and simultaneously learn to harmoniously share the power.
In my family balance doesn't look like it 'should'. My mom often reminds me to use my new buddhist name, whereas another family member refuses to use it and doesn't want it used in their presence.
A beloved aunt is worried by the new name and fears that I will become someone she won't recognize. So we made a pact together just the two of us, never to change - that may seem like a comforting fantasy, but it's also true - the outer personality stuff may come and go, but the deep love I feel for her will remain, until it dissolves along with this body sometime within the next few decades, but that will have been long enough.
Balance looks like days of bliss after a particularly deep one-day intensive, followed by irritation at my computer as it becomes unmanageably slow.
Nicely said Shoshin!
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