Contemplations, Poetry, Memoir
“When you let go of everything you think you know about yourself and stay with what’s left, when you willingly abandon the contradictory evaluations of who you are and courageously reach deeply into yourself in order to experience yourself directly, you will come upon a new experience of who you are.”
Erich Schiffman
This summer I hope to visit the place I scattered my mom’s ashes 26 years ago, near the foot of Neahkhanie Mountain on the Oregon coast. Standing in the wind above the sea, I will be sure to remember this Hopi Prayer.
“Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on the ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning hush, I am the swift uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circle flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry. I am not there. I did not die.
My Spirit is still alive.” – Hopi Prayer
(Rasa is a Sanskrit word literally meaning juice, essence, or taste. It also refers to an ancient concept in Indian arts concerning the aesthetic of a composed piece of visual, literary, or musical work. More specifically, Rasas are the feelings evoked in the reader or audience by the artistic work.)
Your life, this life, not separate. Rather, linked to all others. Are you the creator or the creation? Are you the central character or the chief spectator?
You are the witness, the audience, ever in the throes of each Rasa rising up within you. Where is your Vismaya, your wonder – your Adbhuta, astonishment? Ruled by the strange, the sad, the sharp and cold, the soft and warm. Governed by your smile, tears, the metronome of your heart.
You prepare tea, walk dogs, read books, drink water from a clear glass, and none of these things are ordinary, though often mistaken as such.
The world is at once a utopia and wasteland. I have watched bodies become prisons – the bodies of those I have loved. I have watched minds become solitary confinement. I have watched myself twist and turn, bend over backwards, push on and on.
Sometimes I wonder, will we not truly see one another until after we have passed onward and inward? Such is the light of a star upon the brows of the earthbound.
What have we been, in the very ground of our being? What might we become? These questions are of past and future. In trying to answer them, we will not find peace.
Carry the wind of the present in your heart and you will never thirst. You will participate in eternity. You will experience Real Time, not clock time, not practical time, not linear time.
We carry bow and arrow but not much power.
Let us have no use for it.
There is no room left to breathe when we make too much of things, when we are swept into drama. The drama takes up all the space.
The simple things, small things, have the most power to bring us peace. There is space around them. They are not so small after all.
“My friend Heinrich Zimmer used to say the best things can’t be told, because they transcend thought. The second best are misunderstood, because those are the thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which can’t be thought about, and one gets stuck in the thoughts. The third best are what we talk about.” – Joseph Campbell
Ubuntu is an ancient South African term meaning “connectedness to others”. It points to the human virtues of humanity and compassion.
Yoga is a Sanskrit word meaning “union”, “connection”, or “to join”.
Between all the reading I’ve been doing and my recent journey into yoga teacher training, I have noticed an idea that comes up again and again. It’s the concept that our ego constantly tries to convince us that we are all separate (the ego’s effort to build and maintain any self-identification that supports the illusion of control), when actually we are all interconnected in ways that are beyond our conception.
For instance, having your body tattooed with an image that is meaningful or beautiful to you. I have several tattoos. I like my tattoos, but I also see them for what they are: my ego’s effort to qualify the identity it thinks it is. It’s my ego working hard to define itself, to project a self-image it finds favorable.
The identity our ego insists is real, is of course not real. It is an illusion brought about by the fact that we exist in a world of forms and so our thinking is limited to forms. Who we truly are is beyond forms, and is concerned with awareness, not thinking. When one recognizes the illusion as an illusion, it begins to die. It dies because its survival depends upon it being thought of as reality.
The power of a yoga practice is that it teaches you to be vulnerable and humble. From there, you begin to open up. Stuck places inside you slowly, slowly start to move, like a dam being deconstructed one stone at a time. Maybe life has hardened you in certain ways, and these hard edges start to soften, as you devote yourself to returning to the practice again and again. Your awareness increases, and you begin to notice the difference between awareness and thinking.
“One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu – the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can’t be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity.” –Archbishop Desmond Tutu
“Don’t seek the truth, just cease to cherish opinions.” -Zen saying
“Our separation from each other is an optical illusion of consciousness.” –Albert Einstein
“Give up defining yourself, to yourself or to others. You won’t die. You’ll come to life.” Eckhart Tolle
“Don’t become too narrow. Live fully. Meet all kinds of people. You’ll learn something from everyone. Follow what you feel in your heart.” -Yuri Kochiyama
“He pondered this feeling which completely filled him as he slowly made his way. He pondered deeply, sinking down into the depths of this feeling, as through deep water, until he reached the point where the causes lie. For to know the causes – so it seemed to him – that is what thinking is. And only in this way do feelings become knowledge instead of being wasted. In this way they become meaningful and begin to radiate what is within them.”
-Herman Hesse, Siddhartha
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