The presence of this life is like a single day.
…. Deal with life’s real meaning straight away.
Longchenpa
Tag: Alive
A full, but short, life.
At the start of August I wrote about the kitten whom our neighbours had brought home, little Minette, and the lessons I could learn from her trust and playfulness. Since then she became a regular feature in our house, coming over early in the morning for what I suspect was her second breakfast and generally exploring under the settee and in the garage, sitting beside me with loud purring or chasing flies at the window.
When I arrived home today my neighbour came to meet me with tears in her eyes. Minette had been attacked in the evening time by another cat and had been badly wounded. Despite the best efforts of the vet she was in too much pain and the decision was made to put her down. My neighbours could not sleep the night she was struggling between life and death, their children really upset at the loss of their little pet.
I was saddened by the loss of this little friend, who brought so much joy each day. I know that my sense of loss is not as great as that of my neighbours, and that the kitten was just a few months old. However, we suffer small losses and disappoinments each day. As I have posted before, Stephen Levine reminds us that grieving that has to go on for all the little losses and disappointments that happen throughout our days. He calls this “our ordinary, everyday grief” which builds up following the “disappointments and disillusionment, the loss of trust and confidence that follows the increasingly less satisfactory arch of our lives”.
How to deal with this loss today and the other reminders that life is less than satisfactory at times? I am increasingly noticing the dialogue in my life between the the seeming opposities of attachment and flight, drawing close and keeping distance. And the wisdom traditions seem to have different teachings which emphasize these different dynamics in the soul. It is not hard to find statements that recommend detachment or flight, such as the traditional Buddhist exhortation to frequently remind ourselves that “we and everyone we hold dear will die”. It is clear that some detachment from changing reality is necessary, especially when one sees too much fulfillment in the material aspects of this world. However, that does not work for me today. In relationships I can sometimes I use that idea as an excuse not to engage. I prefer to see Minette’s short life as being almost perfect, in that she lived fully in this world celebrating her closeness to her family and to us in a joyful way. She trusted and loved fully and did not hold back. Her personality was to be attached and to engage. As I wrote when I first met her, she existed without running the story lines, based on the wounds in our own relationships, which lead us to mistrust and hold back. She did not worry about the meaning of life. She lived.
The soul has an equal task and commitment, to find the treasures and explore the ins and outs of life by being attached. Just as there is spiritual practice in search of the highest and most refined reaches of human potential, so there is soul practice in pursuit of the juices and nutriments of life’s entanglements.
Thomas Moore, Soulmates
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
Have
you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives, tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?
Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?
Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides with perfect courtesy to let you in, Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass! Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark acorn of your heart!
No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, that something is missing from your life!
Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself continually? Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?
Well, there is time left – fields everywhere invite you into them.
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul? Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!
To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw, nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the present hour, to the song falling out of the mockingbird’s pink mouth, to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened in the night
To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
While the soul, after all, is only a window, and the opening of the window no more difficult than the wakening from a little sleep.
Only last week I went out among the thorns and said to the wild roses: deny me not, but suffer my devotion. Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red, hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.
For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters, caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!
A woman standing in the weeds. A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what’s coming next is coming with its own heave and grace. Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things, upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?
And I would touch the faces of the daises, and I would bow down to think about it.
That was then, which hasn’t ended yet. Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light, I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean’s edge.
I climb, I backtrack. I float. I ramble my way home.
Mary Oliver, West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems
A Joyful Occasion
We do not have to create joy. It is an innate quality already within us, however hidden or dormant it may be. As innocent babies we all have a natural joy. We all can still squeal with delight given the right circumstances. When we’re not overwhelmed with stress or suffering, this natural state becomes revealed.
James Baraz
Once you have insight, then you find you enjoy and delight in the beauty and goodness of things. Truth, beauty, and goodness delight us; in them we find joy.
Ajahn Sumedho
Forever begin
In Memory of my Father, born this day 1920.
Begin to the loneliness that cannot end, since it perhaps is what makes us begin,
begin to wonder at unknown faces
at crying birds in the sudden rain
at branches stark in the willing sunlight
at seagulls foraging for bread
at couples sharing a sunny secret
alone together while making good.
Though we live in a world that dreams of ending
that always seems about to give in
something that will not acknowledge conclusion
insists that we forever begin.
Brendan Kennelly, Begin
Life Dances
Life dances and you have to dance with it, whether it is taking you on a wonderful ride or is stepping on your toes. This is the necessary price and transcendent gift of being incarnate; alive in a body. But it is just life dancing. Life will move you in the rhythm and direction of its own nature. Each moment is a fresh moment in the dance, and if you are lost in clinging to the past or clinging to your fears of the future, you are not present for the dance.
Philip Moffitt
Within each one of us lies great potential, the potential to relate ot others and this world in a more authentic way. However, not every potential is fulfilled. Sometimes, it is a fear of change or a fear to take a risk which blocks the development, creating a narrowness of attention and a loss of confidence. We can doubt whether we have the strength to do what is before us, or we sometimes can be held back by what others or convention dictates. Courage is needed to reach our full potential and allow situations emerge. Developing our future happiness can demand that we take the risk to engage with our lives.
Every day we unconsciously take refuge in something that we think will offer us security and protection. It can be fear, as it seems better not to reach out or not to try new things. It is easier to remain in our comfort zone, preferring to avoid possible scenarios. It has been shown that whether we make positive – “approach goals” – or mainly negative, – “avoidance goals” – can lead to the difference between a life that is thriving and a life that is focused on surviving. Often when a future outcome is not clear, the first instinct is to move away. As recent posts stated, we can be dominated by experiences in the past, conscious or unconscious , or the fear of the future. We can get stuck, unable to see the rich, fluid potential of now.
How can we create a space where we’re not trapped by negativity and respond more fully to the richness offered in this moment? We begin by settling the mind, settling the body, and getting in touch with the breath. When we stay in the here-and-now, we can see the stories that arise continually much more clearly. Now is now. There is not another now. If we realize that, we stop putting things off and engage in our life in a more wholehearted way.
Meditation helps our mind to not dwell on what might happen or on what we have lost. If we practice setting our minds on those things all the time, we can miss the fact that each moment is fresh, offering a new start. In meditation we strengthen confidence in our natural mind, which is limitless. Working in this way reduces the fear of the future, allowing us create ourselves afresh. We step out onto the floor and take the chance. We accept the other’s hand. We dance. The greatest sadness is not the possibility that we will appear foolish; it is that we will not get up off our seat.
Mindfulbalance 