friday morning, coming down

hello,

thanks to all for their wonderful postings from yesterday. it seems to me, from what i've read so far, that it might behoove me to spend this first week on the blog just exploring the question "what is loss?" as usual, i find the dictionary of little help. yesterday's definition is so frustratingly oversimplified that it doesn't really get at the essence of the definition. destruction and ruin. defintion 2a says on m-w.com says, "the act of losing a possession". this definition seems to contradict the sentiment expressed by an anonymous poster from yesterday:

I try not to mourn too much the loss of things.

can loss exist without mourning? my husband chiztiz and i got into a debate last night, and we framed the same issue a little bit differently; we were asking what is the relationship between the word "lost" and "loss". to me, a thing might be lost, and never truly be a loss. such things might include a house, a realtionship, one's youth. if one doesn't mourn, is it actually loss? or is merely the reality of a thing that is gone that was present before loss?

i have my feelings, but am interested in yours. thoughts?

daily dharma: With persistent practice, consciousness may eventually be perceived or felt as an entity of mere luminosity and knowing, to which anything is capable of appearing and which, when appropriate conditions arise, can be generated in the image of whatsoever object. As long as the mind does not encounter the external circumstance of conceptuality, it will abide empty without anything appearing in it, like clear water. Its very entity is that of mere experience. Let the mind flow of its own accord without conceptual overlay. Let the mind rest in its natural state, and observe it. In the beginning, when you are not used to this practice, it is quite difficult, but in time the mind appears like clear water. The Dalai Lama, The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness, ediited by Sidney Pibrn