Hi, it's Andy here and welcome to Radio Headspace and to Tuesday morning.

Today's reflection is not meant to challenge any particular opinion or belief that you

might hold that you might have grown up with, it's more just to encourage a sense of openness,

of curiosity, of wonder perhaps, greater willingness and intention to spend more time in the present

moment and less in a potential future moment.

One of the questions that I get asked quite often actually, and maybe it's because I used

to be a monk, maybe it's because people are thinking me as Buddhist, I don't know, but

they often ask me whether I believe in reincarnation, in rebirth, and my answer, more often

not is that it doesn't really matter what I think, whether I think it is true or not, it

makes no difference as to whether something will happen and certainly should make any

difference to what you think.

We spend a great deal of time thinking about what might happen.

We like to have a sense of certainty, a sense of security, and not knowing is difficult

for us as human beings, so it requires almost like the ultimate willingness to rest in uncertainties,

to not go there, to not get caught up in what could happen, what might happen, and instead

focus on the present.

It reminds me of a Zen story, in front of a better word, of a Japanese emperor who goes

to visit an enlightened master and says, Master, tell me what happens to an enlightened man

after his death, and the master replies, I have no idea, and the emperor says, but you're

a Zen master, and the master says, yeah, I'm not a dead one.

But when it comes to life and death, there is arguably a space in which we can rest where

we can still respect whatever teachings and everything else that we might follow in

...