Come passion

How beautiful it seemed for me in moments small, as when the sunlight that filtered thru the trees and then the window lit onto my face just before I woke up in the morning and was the first thing I saw in the new day.  How awesome as when I lay against the warm granite of Half Dome and look out at Yosemite Valley 2500 feet below me with the mass of that great rock pushing up on my belly and out towards space as the force of the spinning planet tries to throw it off like a kid on a merry go round.

At some point the realization of the wonder of this life had born in me a deep and passionate love for Life itself.

As I stopped putting me at the center of all I believed meaningful, as I let go of the measures of humans and started trying to take up the measure of earth and time beyond my life, the miracle of the cycle that is Life began to sound a song, pure and familiar, from a composer who's orchestra was surrounding me, above, below and within me.  Not only was I the listener, but also one of the players.  I have no score in front of me but can hear the notes that want to be played when I listen to the sound all around me.  I long for harmony, to be harmonious, to play my part loud and committed and well, with passion.

Come passion, come pain.  How hard it is to love and know that all things change.

As I begin to comprehend the magnitude of the wonder that is this awareness, I am also challenged by the understanding that life and death are not separate, that they are parts of a larger cycle.  Suffering is an inescapable part of this cycle.  I begin to see suffering equal to effort, equal to struggle, equal to awareness.  I start to feel a seemingly unlimited compassion for all things.  All things struggle, suffer in the effort to be and at some point all things change from one awareness to something else.  All things die.

 "Friendship to all living forms, 

delight in the qualities of the virtuous ones, 

unlimited compassion for all suffering beings, 

equanimity toward all who wish me harm, 

may my soul have these dispositions now and forever."

-- Jain prayer

(a friend told me that some of the Jain's have starved to death rather than kill another living thing by eating it.  I have to admit that it is a logic that has bounced around in my head, a conclusion to a line of thought.  In that perspective it makes the end of ones own life much more acceptable. )

I would like to treat and be treated with compassion, with kindness, with love.  I haven't always been, nor will I always be treated so. I haven't always treated other's so.   Life is hard enough just to exist.  Nobody, no thing, needs to be treated with other than compassion.


I have a life to live out.  The cost of my life will be that of other life.  I can take that other life with respect and gratitude while also nurturing other life, or, I can be ungrateful, unaware, and propagate suffering.

To kill is easy, all one has to do is exist.  But to nurture life and celebrate Life one has to live.

Selfless awareness allows familiarity. Familiarity allows affection.  Affection allows love.  Love allows compassion.


A road is a cut thru an existing environment, forced upon the landscape, in spite of what was there before.  A Path will wonder around a rock or tree or a field of flowers, or along a stream and is influenced by everything that was there before.  It becomes a familiarity, like a whistled, or hummed tune. (a concept put forth by W. Berry)

Not life in the fast lane, but rather, A reasonable Path.