the nature of life

 

 

 

 

 

Earth dissolves into water. Water dissolves into fire.
Fire dissolves into air. Air dissolves into space.

Dying [Dissolving], in many cases, does not happen all of
a sudden. It is a gradual process of withdrawing from life
in form.

When I speak of the four elements dissolving, I am not
speaking exactly of physical form. Rather, I am pointing to
the ineffable but observable animating qualities...
The animating qualities also dissolve - apparently missing
when we are left only with the heaviness of the corpse
after death.

There is something beyond the four elements - 

the spirit,soul, or animating presence. 

 The inner dissolution happens simultaneously. 

 Our medical instruments and devices can
certainly measure the physical disintegration, 

but the inner dissolution that happens simultaneously

 is subtle and still...

They are all dissolving - 

the elements and their associated states and as a result,

 the self is dissolving as well. 

 

 This is happening all the time,

 we just see it at the surface at the
time of dying.

Now who are you?

Fragility and impermanence are in the nature of life.

 It's all always coming together and falling apart -

 not just the physical properties of life -

 and not just at the time of death.

Our sense of self is impermanent. 

While illness can contract us into an even smaller sense of self, 

many people who are sick and dying speak of 

no longer being limited by the previous boundaries

 of their old, familiar identities.

We come to embody much wider identities.

 The interior life and the external world permeate each other,
they commingle.

~ Frank Ostaseski
from The Five Invitations

the long black bag

 

 

 

 

 

 

What if [negative emotions] have something essential to communicate to us and each other,

 and the real problem is the misguided attitude that negative feelings make us less evolved

 and need fixing? 

 

In the same way that we hold others at an arm’s length when they are too different from us,

 we avoid the inner encounter with otherness, excluding anything that doesn’t fit

 the image we’ve been building of ourselves.

‘Negative emotions’ don’t cease to exist because we ignore them.

 They just find other ways to express themselves. Sometimes we lash out 

inappropriately, having confusing crying fits, or feel protractedly numb. 

Most commonly, we slip into depression and anxiety. . . .

If not addressed in a person’s life, these issues can harden into ideologies

 which are then passed down through the generations. When you add to this 

equation a loud or charismatic leader, movements like Nazism will be born

 from the corroborative fear of otherness. 

 

We think of Nazis as evil, but the truth is we all have the potential for this kind of evil,

 which is ultimately the act of turning away from the suffering of others and ourselves.

Most of us have been raised to be moral, good, and agreeable, 

putting all of our ‘unacceptable’ qualities in what Robert Bly calls 

“The Long Black Bag” we drag behind us, or what Jung termed the personal

 “Shadow.” The Shadow is the place where everything we have forgotten,

 denied, rejected, or not yet discovered goes to live. 

 

 But when we try to live up to the impossible image of a spiritually enlightened, 

knowledgeable, selfless, patient, forgiving, easy-going, supportive, generous superhuman,

 the dark side of our nature just gains in power. . . .

You always have the choice to turn away or to look for redemption in the shadows. 

Sometimes turning away is exactly what you need in the moment, 

especially if you’re tired from toiling down in there.

 Trust that whatever you decide is the right decision.

 Also know that if the issue being presented has roots,

 it will still be there when you’re ready to look at it. . . .

We cannot simply remove the shadow all at once.

 It takes wisdom, courage, and forbearance for our shadows to reveal themselves

 to us so they can be faced and dealt with gently, compassionately, and firmly.

 

 

 

 

 

~   Toko-pa Turner

from Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home

  Photo by Jozef Klopacka

 

 

 

looking back on grief

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Tis good — the looking back on Grief —
To re-endure a Day —
We thought the Mighty Funeral —
Of All Conceived Joy —

To recollect how Busy Grass
Did meddle — one by one —
Till all the Grief with Summer — waved
And none could see the stone.

And though the Woe you have Today
Be larger — As the Sea
Exceeds its Unremembered Drop —
They’re Water — equally — 

 

 

 

 

~ Emily Dickinson

 from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

with thanks to brainpickings

the tent

 

 

 

Outside, the freezing desert night.

This other night grows warm, kindling.

Let the landscape be covered with thorny crust.

We have a soft garden here.

 

 

The continents blasted, cities and little towns,

everything become a scorched blacked ball.

The news we hear is full of grief for that future,

but the real news inside here is 

there is no news at all.

 

 

 

~ Rumi

to witness our own limits transgressed

 

 

We need the tonic of wildness, 

to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, 

and hear the booming of the snipe; 

to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, 

and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.  

At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, 

we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, 

that land and sea be infinitely wild, 

unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable,

we can never have enough of nature.  

We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, 

vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, 

the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, 

the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. 
.

We need to witness our own limits transgressed, 

and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.

 

 

~ Henry David Thoreau

from Walden, 'Spring,' 1854

photos by Eliot Porter from:

Wilderness Is the Preservation of the World 

 

beneath hurt and grief

Whoever finds love

beneath hurt and grief

disappears into emptiness

with a thousand new disguises

~ Rumi

version by Coleman Barks

burlap sack

A person is full of sorrow

the way a burlap sack is full of stones or sand.

We say, "Hand me the sack,"

but we get the weight.

Heavier if left out in the rain.

To think that the sand or stones are the self is an error.

To think that grief is the self is an error.

Self carries grief as a pack mule carries the side bags,

being careful between the trees to leave extra room.

The mule is not the load of ropes and nails and axes.

The self is not the miner nor builder nor driver.

What would it be to take the bride

and leave behind the heavy dowry?

To let the thin-ribbed mule browse in tall grasses,

its long ears waggling like the tails of two happy dogs?

~ Jane Hirshfield

a journey up a mountain

 

 

 

 

 

My observations are those of a beginner.

 As they are completely fresh in my mind and concern the first difficulties

 a beginner encounters, they may be more useful to beginners

 making their first ascents than treatises written by professionals.

 

 These are no doubt more methodical and complete,

 but are intelligible only after a little preliminary experience. 

The entire aim of these notes is to help the beginner

 acquire this preliminary experience a little faster. 

 

....

 

Keep your eye fixed on the way to the top,

 but don't forget to look right in front of you. 

 

The last step depends on the first. 

Don't think you're there just because you see the summit. 

 

Watch your footing, be sure of the next step,

 but don't let that distract you from the highest goal.

 

 The first step depends on the last.

 

 ....

 

When you take off on your own, leave some trace 

of your passage that will guide your return: 

one rock set on top of another, some grass pierced by a stick.

 

 But if you come to a place you cannot cross or that is dangerous,

 remember that the trace you have left might lead the people 

following you into trouble. So go back the way you came

 and destroy any traces you have left. 

 

This is addressed to anyone who wants to leave traces 

of his passage in this world. And even without wanting to, 

we always leave traces. 

 

Answer to your fellow men for the traces you leave behind.

 

 ....

 

If you slip or have a minor spill, don’t interrupt your momentum

 but even as you right yourself recover the rhythm of your walk.

 

Find your pace again the moment you get up.

 In your mind take careful note of the circumstances of your fall, 

but don’t let your body linger over what happened. 

 

The body constantly tries to draw attention to itself by its shiverings, 

its breathlessness, its palpitations, its shudders and sweats and cramps;

 but it reacts quickly to any scorn and indifference in its master. 

 

Once it senses that he is not taken in by its jeremiads, 

once it understands that it will inspire no pity for it that way,

 then it comes into line and obediently accomplishes its task.

 ~  René Daumal 

excerpts from Mount Analogue:
A Tale of Non-Euclidian and Symbolically Authentic Mountaineering Adventures

 

 

 

 

the journey of grieving

 

 

 

 

[Frankl] is speaking to me. He is speaking for me. . . . 

I read this, which is at the very heart of Frankl’s teaching:

 

 Everything can be taken from a man but one thing:

 the last of the human freedoms—

to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances,

 to choose one’s own way. Each moment is a choice. 

No matter how frustrating or boring or constraining 

or painful or oppressive our experience, 

we can always choose how we respond.

 And I finally begin to understand that I, too, have a choice. 

This realization will change my life.

~ Viktor E. Frankl, 

from Man’s Search for Meaning

 

 

The choice to accept myself as I am: human, imperfect.

 And the choice to be responsible for my own happiness.

 To forgive my flaws and reclaim my innocence. 

To stop asking why I deserved to survive. 

To function as well as I can, to commit myself to serve others,

 to do everything in my power to honor my parents,

 to see to it that they did not die in vain. To do my best,

 in my limited capacity, so future generations don’t experience what I did.

 

 To be useful, to be used up, to survive and to thrive

 so I can use every moment to make the world a better place.

 And to finally, finally stop running from the past.

 To do everything possible to redeem it, and then let it go.

 I can make the choice that all of us can make.

 I can’t ever change the past. But there is a life I can save: 

It is mine. The one I am living right now,

 this precious moment. . . .

And to the vast campus of death that consumed my parents

 and so very many others, to the classroom of horror

 that still had something sacred to teach me about how to live—

that I was victimized but I’m not a victim, that I was hurt but not broken,

 that the soul never dies, that meaning and purpose 

can come from deep in the heart of what hurts us the most—

 

I utter my final words. Goodbye, I say. And, Thank you. 

Thank you for life, and for the ability to finally accept the life that is.





~ Edith Eva Eger

from The Choice: Embrace the Possible

with thanks to Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation

 

 

 

 

a simple life

 

 

Simple life does not consist in the mere possession of a few things
 but in the freedom from possession and non-possession, 
in the indifference to things that comes with deep understanding.
 Merely to renounce things in order to reach greater happiness, 
greater joy that is promised, is to seek reward which limits thought
 and prevents it from flowering and discovering reality. 

To control thought-feeling for a greater reward, for a greater result,
 is to make it petty, ignorant and sorrowful. Simplicity of life
 comes with inner richness, with inward freedom from craving,
 with freedom from acquisitiveness, from addiction, from distraction.
 From this simple life there comes that necessary one-pointedness
 which is not the outcome of self-enclosing concentration 
but of extensional awareness and meditative understanding. 

Simple life is not the result of outward circumstances;
 contentment with little comes with the riches of inward understanding. 
If you depend on circumstances to make you satisfied with life
 then you will create misery and chaos, for then you are a plaything
 of environment, and it is only when circumstances are transcended 
through understanding that there is order and clarity. 

To be constantly aware of the process of acquisitiveness,
 of addiction, of distraction, brings freedom from them 
and so there is a true and simple life.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Collected Works Volume III Ojai 

8th Public Talk 2nd July, 1944

choosing drifting

a shantyboat community by the river's edge.  

After building their "shantyboat," out of mostly salvaged materials, 

Harlan and Anna set out on the river, 

drifting.

I had no theories to prove. 

I merely wanted to try living by my own hands, 

independent as far as possible from a system of division of labor 

in which the participant loses most of the pleasure 

of making and growing things for himself.  

I wanted to bring in my own fuel and smell its sweet smoke 

as it burned on the hearth I had made.  

I wanted to grow my own food, 

catch it in the river, or forage after it.  

In short, I wanted to do as much as I could for myself, 

because I had already realized from partial experience 

the inexpressible joy of so doing.

This is a windy day with a secret exhilaration about it. 

When I look at the rough water patched with cloud shadows, 

the boat pitching slightly in the wind waves -

 all this from a higher plane somewhere above these little affairs.  

Yet they are a part and lead into it. 

The pure delight of drifting.  

Each time, it was a thrill to shove out into the current, 

to feel the life and power of the river, 

whose beginning and end were so remote.  

We became a part of it, like the driftwood... 

The tension and excitement, the near ecstasy of drifting.  

We had to stop often and take it in small doses.

~ Harlan Hubbard

from Harlan Hubbard and the River - A Visionary Life

by Don Wallis

block prints by Harlan Hubbard

from 'Sonata at Payne Hollow'

 

Harlan and Anna Hubbard



And now, as both have known they would,
they turn toward one another, and thus they are
changed, revealing themselves now
as neither young nor old, but timeless
and clear, as each appears
within the long affection of the other. 

~ Wendell Berry

 

 

supple

Can you focus your life-breath until you become

supple as a newborn child?

 

While you cleanse your inner vision

will you be found without fault?

 

Can you love people and lead them

without forcing your will on them?

 

When Heaven gives and takes away

can you be content with the outcome?

 

When you understand all things

can you step back from your own understanding?

Giving birth and nourishing,

making without possessing,

expecting nothing in return.

To grow, yet not to control:

This is the mysterious virtue.

~ Lao Tzu

from Tao Te Ching

art: Aboriginal Australia Rainbow Serpent

Middle School Art

 

 

a dense cloud of thoughts

For those who allow their mind to wander here and there,

 everything will go wrong.

Just as the sun cannot be seen in a densely clouded sky,

 so one’s own Self cannot be seen in a mind-sky

 which is darkened by a dense cloud of thoughts.

All the benefit to be obtained by inner inquiry

 is only the destruction of the deceptive ‘I’-sense [the ego]. 

It would be too much to say that it is to attain Self,

 which always shines clear and ever-attained.

Firmly abiding as ‘I am I’, 

without any movement of the mind, 

is the attainment of Godhood.

When scrutinized, 

among all the many qualities necessary for those 

who wish to attain the imperishable Liberation, 

it is the attitude of a great liking to be in permanent solitude

 that must be well established in their mind.

According to the outlook of different people 

the same woman is considered to be wife, 

husband’s sister, daughter-in-law, wife of one’s brother-in-law,

 mother, and so on. 

 

Yet in truth she does not at all undergo any change in her form.

Unless one realizes oneself to be the unattached Self, 

which is like the space that remains not even in the least attached to anything,

 though it exists inside, outside and pervading everything,

 one cannot remain undeluded.

One who has destroyed the mind is the emperor

 who rides on the neck of the elephant of supreme Jnana (self-knowledge).

 Know for certain that the turmoil of the mind

 is the sole cause of the miserable bondage 

of the cruel and fierce birth [and death].

~ Ramana Maharshi

art by Colette Baumback

the busy edge dissolves

 

 

 

The object in meditation and all of our contemplative disciplines is silence. But… 

that silence is in order for you to perceive something other than yourself — 

what you’ve arranged as yourself to actually perceive this frontier

 between what you call your self and what you call other than your self, 

whether that’s a person or a landscape.

One of the greatest arts of poetry is actually to create silence through attentive speech — 

speech that says something in such a way that it appears as a third frontier

 between you and the world, and invites you into a deeper and more generous

 sense of your own identity and the identity of the world… 

 

Poetry is the verbal art-form by which we can actually create silence.

Silence is frightening, an intimation of the end, the graveyard of fixed identities.

 Real silence puts any present understanding to shame; orphans us from certainty;

 leads us beyond the well-known and accepted reality and confronts us 

with the unknown and previously unacceptable conversation 

about to break in upon our lives.

In silence, essence speaks to us of essence itself

 and asks for a kind of unilateral disarmament, 

our own essential nature slowly emerging

 as the defended periphery atomizes and falls apart.

 

 As the busy edge dissolves we begin to join the conversation 

through the portal of a present unknowing, robust vulnerability, 

revealing in the way we listen, a different ear, a more perceptive eye, 

an imagination refusing to come too early to a conclusion, 

and belonging to a different person 

than the one who first entered the quiet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

~ David Whyte

from  Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning

of Everyday Words

 photo by Aaron Burden

with thanks to BrainPickings