If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving
and for once could do nothing
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Pablo Nerudo, Keeping Quiet
This season calls us to the harvest. Seeds planted long ago create a bounty and fullness in our lives. Autumn invites me to remember the places in my life where I had a dream that once felt tiny and has now grown and ripened into fullness. I savor these places where my life feels abundant. I relish the experience of being nourished by dreams into my own growing wholeness.
The poet Rilke writes of autumn: “Command the last fruits to be full; / give them just two more southern days, / urge them on to completion and chase / the last sweetness into the heavy wine.” We move toward our own ripening and in that journey we let go of what no longer serves us.
We live in times when it often feels like everything is coming undone. This season reminds us that the journey of relinquishing all we hold dear is also the journey of harvesting. Somehow these two come together year after year. We are invited to rest into its mystery.
What are you releasing that no longer energizes you?
What dreams do you want to harvest this season?
Christing Valter Paintner, Autumn Equinox: Honoring Harvest and Release
From a different tradition, but saying the same thing as the last two days. “Erasing”, letting go of preconceived constructions, frees us up to write a new story with each moment.
Only the hand that erases
can write the true thing.
Whatever assumptions you have about yourself, no matter how reasonable they might be, they are still a creation in the present. By believing in them, by thinking and holding to them, you’re continually creating yourself as a personality.
Awakeness is not a creation.
It’s the immanent act of attention in the present.
Ajahn Sumedho, The Problem with Personality
Things are continually changing and change in ways that we do not expect. The human tendency is to fix ourselves and each moment into something expected and define it by how it has to be, rather than how it is evolving. The great adventure is to live each moment fully, as a gift which has arrived without us expecting it.
A person who has clarified their real state sees only
each thing,
each thing,
each thing,
and lets go of understanding an underlying nature for each thing.
Dogen, Uji
Whatever is subject to arising,
is also subject to passing away
The Buddha, Collection of Middle-length Discourses, 56
