Formal, Informal…

Seeking the path of the relative and absolute.

Through tender body, moment, and time I come finally, gratefully, to the page once again. Like a small animal in the forest who finds themselves warming briefly on some edge of a field in the sunlight of a spring morning, luxury is a construct not near to mind.

Writing does often feel like a luxury to me. When I bring this metaphor of pen to page, I always hope that what emerges expresses itself as a true prayer; a gesture emanating fourth that lands as nutrient, gentle soul balm, path light, evocation of a mirthful lightheartedness, or advancement of yearning inquiry for any that might come across it.

For me, writing is a moment of feeling evolution’s craft unfolding; my task being simply to stand in an honest enough reverence that some poetry might take my heart and remind my flesh of the great cosmic gesture of love and compassion for me and for all beings as one.

What I mean to say, I think, is that this time I take away from the mundane tasks of hunting and gathering, navigating the viscosities of life’s weather, pondering confusion in search of clarity, this time often feels stolen, some magical moment torn open in the passage of life, a pale shadow perhaps of stealing fire from the gods.

There are concerns mundane and those profound, concerns personal and those grand in scope of time and space. Rent to be paid, and millions hungry to be fed, billions more imprisoned, a course of work to be navigated and environmental destruction to be mended. Within it all this idea of artwork, a gesture with no more mundane purpose than painting a brushstroke across the blank canvas, a humbled expression of something ineffable that must be given nod that we remain true to the precious miracle of our birth.

It’s been some time since I’ve found the breath for word and page, may this effort today find some way, in the words of the Sufis, to pay the debt of its existence.

I had the privilege recently to attend a meditation retreat in the tradition of Mahamudra Buddhism, to practice in community with long enduring instructions and a wise and kind guide to help us drink in and metabolize these precious teachings.

Meditation in this context and regard is not so much a relative health and wellness practice, though certainly these are some of its benefits. Rather, meditation is a pathway of realization from the average ordinary neutrality of that aforementioned forest creature, to see through the useful constructs of evolutionary conception and discover something more oft unnoticed and yet of infinitely greater value. Like a Ruby embedded in gold compared to an ocean of freedom in love and celebration.

It’s funny (ha ha) that in this context I can find myself uneasy, unsettled, and wanting to finally get the joke, stop the searching and simply laugh. At the same time, I have carried a love for a certain poem for many many years now:

I said to the wanting creature inside me: 
What is this river you want to cross? 
There are no travelers on the river-road, & no road.
Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or resting?
  
There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman. 
There is no towrope either, and no one to pull it. 
There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!
And there is no body, and no mind!
  
Do you believe there is some place that will make the soul less thirsty? 
 In that great absence you will find nothing.
Be strong then, and enter into your own body; 
There you have a solid place for your feet.
  
Think about it carefully! 
Don't go off somewhere else!
Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of imaginary things, & 
stand firm in that which you are.

-- the poet Kabir (1398 - 1518), translation by Robert Bly

“Stand firm and that which you are… Don’t go off somewhere else!”

I take these words as guidepost. Where in this wide wild world to begin in writing something intended to be shared…

Tender body. It’s been a summer of fragile health. Even now in the final moments of August and treading lightly on this flesh, I am taking (on doctor’s orders) more time to rest from effort and busyness than I might naturally and more casually be inclined. While I begin here in these simple statements of the body, I know that something within me yarns to explore constructs ranging much farther afield from this concrete 10’ x 10’ cubicle I treasure as “my office.”

So yes, tender flesh, yearning heart, wisdom admonishing to stay in calm abiding. Let us call this the ground of the moment.

In addition, I have been living this spring and summer in a rush of activity; first to plant a line in the sand and declare an activity of Open Field Awakening, and also to dig into a far-ranging effort to raise the support (with some success) that will be necessary to truly engage the former.

Those focus and the busyness of task that they entailed led, in combination with the orientation of my mind, to a viscosity of stress resulting in the fragile state of body from which I continue to lift myself today. So this is me standing firm in “that which I am…” A body, a man in community, a series of tasks unfolding, a moment of luxury stolen from the inhale/exhale of activity and repose.

But there is always more to this story.

In the teachings of Mahamudra and other Buddhism, we can meet the idea of relative and absolute bodhicitta. The latter of this I have spoken to briefly already; the wish for enlightenment that manifests as a clear and boundless generosity, a skill fullness of love and the wisdom to act each moment in its full expression. The former also is present as a longing in my heart every day, a longing which I hope manifests itself in direct and meaningful action through this mind, body, and spirit.

Let me speak now to this former of the two…

This is truly what I wish to express in words when I come to this page to write. I wish to add my throat to a collective song emerging from countless voices and even more quarters, silent and invisible to most in their work in the world. When I write here, I wish and I hope and I mean to offer some craft to the conversation of dwelling in this, almost unnameable, time between worlds.

While recent frailties have confined me to bed longer than I might’ve liked, they have also provided a different context of surrender which allowed me to put aside the pen in exchange for the reading glass. I have been grateful to take in some important perspectives of others in this context.

The news at home (on this little globe we share) is fraught to be sure. Whether your eye is caught by some turbulence in politics, the threat of rockets outside your door, a march of climate threat, economic uncertainty, or any number of other concerns, there is plenty to distract and keep our attention lodged firmly in the river as we imagine it to be.

While I do take note of this immediate terrain, I cannot help also but to wonder how best to appreciate these aspects of forever pollution, social distraction, and a modern worldview seemingly determined to ride its rocket to the imaginary land of endless consumption and destruction.

To put it simply, if I can: I wonder how even to approach an inquiry of place and time and our human communion with this far-ranging predicament.

Each day, each moment even, we apply ourselves to the activity that serves to satisfy our intent. Be that surrender or control, hedonic desire or altruistic generosity, we live in expression of choice (I’ll not tackle on this page from whence that choice arises.) The actuarial tables tell me I might have a few decades left to live. For my part, I mean to make it longer. For the part of this body on most days, I’m often surprised to make it just a little further.

What I do with this time now is twofold; relative and absolute bodhicitta.

In an absolute sense, there is in every moment a profound opportunity to realize the amazing mystery and miracle transcendent of coming into being and passing away; to live in this realization is to become a place of refuge for all those caught in the sublime state of longing, to become a gesture of boundless care and compassion for all of life.

In a relative sense, I must walk a refined path of action, an application and expression of wisdom and a skillful means that reaches as far as I responsibly can, both wide into the world and long through time. Recognizing the butterfly effect of every gesture, I strive to move with efficiency, clarity, and something approaching a perfect love in appreciation for the immediate harms afoot, the reverberations of harms prior, and the recognizable harms to come.

I seek, in the words and ideas of others, in communion with the sanga of practice, and in the wisdom ever present in the deepest quiet of every moment, a righteous path forward in the world. I seek the company of those humble enough to reach wide and far. I seek the humility myself to let live through me that great gesture that brought into being the entire majestic cosmos and every eddy of perfect beauty that makes the world anew in endless forgiveness of every moment.

It is not the enlightened some, nor the crafty many, it is not the indigenous few, nor the progressive caucus, it is not the invisible hand of the market, not the deity of AGI, it is not dumb luck or fortune alone that will light the path of life on earth through these trying times. It is neither the high view, nor the low alone that will lead us through this time of treachery. It is perhaps nothing we can name.

There is yet something in ever refining the purity of our intent, our devotion to a path of love made real to the actions of our body, mind, and spirit. There is yet something in our sincere practice of care, striving and reaching, succeeding and failing, rising again in brilliance and resilience and resting in humility, appreciating our gift of life and “resolving,” in the words of the Sufis, “to pay the debt of our existence.”

It is midafternoon now. I will polish this briefly, post it, and retire. I will return to this 10 x 10 hermitage tomorrow to pick up the tasks now obvious and yet remaining, inshallah.