letting go vs. holding on

A friend recently introduced me to the saying "let go or be dragged." (Or was it the variant "let go or get dragged"?) It is said to be a Zen proverb, but who can say for sure what the origin is for these slogans. And the origin doesn't much matter to me. For the record, I don't recall reading "Letting Go" by Philip Roth. However, I did read "Letting Go of the Words" by Ginny Redish, and it helped me immensely in writing web content. 

Letting go.

It evokes the question, "Letting go means letting go of what?" Without much forethought, this parade of notions involving "letting go" marches before me: life, death, love, hate, attachment, detachment, fear, expectation, attainment, nonattainment, and notions themselves.

Being dragged.

What question does "being dragged" elicit?  The smart-aleck, rice-bowl-upside-the-head answer would have me repeat verbatim the list italicized above. I don't know; help me out. I guess being dragged translates to holding on, possessing, owning, expecting, anticipating, projecting, reimagining, rehearsing, past, future, notions. 

Being dragged conveys the suffering of not letting go.

Is this mike working? I feel like a comedian who is bombing. (But that's because I am being dragged by preconceived notions I have not let go of.)

I am on the verge of deleting this post or shuttling it off to a bin labeled "draft."

Words, words, words.


“If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.” ~Ajahn Chah