【Q&A Series】
Someone I Once Loved Seems to Have Found Someone New — I Feel So Unsettled!
I was reciting the Buddha’s name, and at the same time telling Amitabha Buddha how unsettled I felt — and then it occurred to me to ask Master for guidance.
Master Jingben Answers: Namo Amitabha. Let me say this to you first: you have done very well.
When your heart is unsettled, your very first thought is to recite the Buddha’s name — and you can even recite while telling Amitabha Buddha, “I feel so unsettled.” This is the most endearing and most genuine face of one who recites the Name. Amitabha Buddha hears you perfectly clearly, and understands you completely.
1. It Is Normal to Feel Unsettled
There is no need to blame yourself for this trouble of heart. We are people with feelings; you once held someone in your heart, and now, seeing that there is “someone else” at her side, your heart sinks — this is entirely natural. Learning the Buddha’s teaching does not mean we will never grieve again; we are still ordinary beings, and when circumstances come upon us, the heart is stirred just the same. What is different is that when we do grieve, we know where we ought to turn.
And you already know — into the Name, “Namo Amitabha.”
2. There Is No Need to Guess
As you yourself said, it only “seems” so. That small glimpse we catch — what lies behind it, we do not really know.
When the heart is unsettled, it is all too easy to start telling ourselves a story; the more we think, the more real it seems, and the more it hurts. So there is no need to guess, no need to seek confirmation, and no need to keep going back to look — the more you look, the more it stirs you up. Leave it alone, and it will fade of itself.
3. Affinity Cannot Be Forced
Whether an affinity of the heart runs deep or shallow comes from conditions long past; it cannot be forced. The two of you talked it through, and now you are friends, close friends — that affinity is in fact still there; it has only changed its form.
Wish her well from your heart, and your own heart will be the first to open up — when you cannot let go, wishing the other well is the quickest way to turn the heart around.
4. Seen from the Dharma
The way we look at such a thing can be widened a little.
In everyday life we are forever dividing people into “mine” and “someone else’s” — what is mine makes me glad; what becomes another’s makes me ache. Yet think carefully: a person never belonged to anyone in the first place. When conditions gather, we walk a stretch of road together; when they disperse, each goes on ahead.
And though we say they have dispersed, no one has truly gone away — we all remain within this one Dharma-realm.
So the ache in the heart is often not because we have really lost anything, but because that line between “you” and “I” has been drawn too tight within us. Let the line loosen, let the heart widen, and looking back, it hardly seems a matter at all — she is well, you are well, each at peace in their own place; is that not enough? And looking far ahead: we who recite the Buddha’s name are all to meet again in the Land of Ultimate Bliss.
5. Entrust It to This Name
When you feel unsettled, recite. There is no need to wait until the heart is calm before you begin — recite with that unsettledness and all. Recite on, and the feeling will settle of its own accord, just as when water grows still, the silt sinks to the bottom by itself.
In this world, where there is meeting there is parting; no one can say how things will go. Only Amitabha Buddha never leaves us, and never changes. This one Name, “Namo Amitabha,” is the surest refuge of our whole life.
You are still young, and the road ahead is long. One who carries the Name in his heart is never alone, wherever he goes — because Amitabha Buddha is always there. Namo Amitabha
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