Organica

Three Peaks

Over the past few years on this path I have noticed 2 very strong evolutions in, or around, me.  They seem at time, contradictions to each other.

As I have aged, and become more physically frail, I have become less attached to this physical state.  I think that I am more appreciative of being a physical, feeling, sensing creature.  I have lived long enough to have experienced many truly enjoyable moments that were of this body I live in.  From the simple joy of the warmth of sunshine on my skin, to the complexities and mystery of physical/emotional love, as a witness to art, as a creator of art, as a son of another human being, as the father of another human being, in deep sorrow and in extreme joy, in fear and in peace I have experienced a truly wonderful existence.
And I am pretty sure that this will end with my death.  At least I have nothing to show me other than this mind/body relationship will cease at my death.  So, I am deeply appreciative, but not attached to these things, this way of being.  Nor am I held by the suffering of this same condition.

In this growing awareness of my own experience in this life, I have also become more aware of the experience of others.  Aren't all people, all things in this same temporary condition?

As I raked the leaves and dried twigs away from the large boulder so as to create an area that I could land on easily, and not possibly twist an ankle as I practice my climbing, I notice the small plants that are just coming up with the arrival of Spring.  I also notice the beetles and ants crawling, and the holes in the peat that are probably the burrows of small animals, voles, mice and such.  I hesitate, and hold the rake.  I consider the work of these animals, the efforts of these small plants.  I consider the lives that I will disturb, disrupt, and possibly end by my actions.

All life exists only at the cost of other life.  That is the defining part of our situation.  Though we cannot change this situation we can consider the suffering we are responsible for in our efforts as we go thru in  this life.

Most of "Organica" (a term I am using to refer to all things. beings, my knowledge of this world) appears to kill to live, the suffering that is brought about by this act could be referred to as necessary.  As a human being, the killing and suffering I cause has little to do with my need to live.  I need water, air, and food, yet most of what I do, like writing this blog, costs so much beyond what those basic things cost in the death and suffering of the rest of "Organica".

Humanity, our societies, have pretty much removed the possibility of living a simpler, more direct life, if it were what I were to choose.  How does a person walk the planet with out a job, paying taxes, being a citizen of a country, owning things.  Who would want to.  Well some would, do, I suppose.

This does not prevent me from considering the way I live, the way, and to what degree, I cause the suffering and death of the rest.

We as humans seem different from the rest.  We are either gifted with a communication skill set that puts us outside of the rest or we are handicapped from a communication skill set that keeps us outside the rest.  No one can say.  But we do have the ability to think and choose and communicate within our own species.  We do have choices in how we go about this life.  We may not be able to exist with out taking other life, but we can choose what we would choose for our own lives, which I would guess something to the effect of "though I know I must end this way of existence at some point, I would like to suffer as little as possible and be given respect and love while here".

How much do I need?  At what cost?  At who's expense?  What do I do that causes the suffering of others (as others might ask what they do that is suffering to me) ?

At some point we might ask ourselves why we would cause this suffering in others, but that is a much more difficult and complex question, with many paths to explore, like a clown car that has more clowns coming out of it than seems possible or reasonable.

Habits

After a recent conversation with a family member I was a little disappointed with myself, with what seemed to me to be a lack of compassion for the person on the other end of the telephone, with the way I was quick to being annoyed or frustrated with the things I was hearing.
I fell into an old familiar attitude with this person I have known all my life.  I stopped hearing what was being said, stopped trying to understand the place of this person and instead went straight to old assumptions and attitudes about what was going on.

It is a hard thing not to do with people who we think we know so well, or have been around for so long.  We believe we have seen all these scenarios before, and understand the motivations behind them.  We recognize reoccurring themes and patterns of disfunction and fail to really listen or look at what is going on right now with them.

If I felt as though I were being treated this way I would end the conversation quickly and feel a bit offended.  I would not appreciate that I was not being seen in real time, as a living growing and changing person, but instead was given only a superficial recognition of who I am or what I was going thru, or how I may have changed and grown.

In my rereading of "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying" by Sogyal Rinpoche, I came to the section on Dying.  In it Sogyal Rinpoche writes about how one might relate to the dying, their real needs and the considerations of what it is that they might be going thru.  The insight is and need of compassion seems most important at this time.

I consider the idea of living a good and happy life, fulfilling and full of love, but then ending it in a drawn out fear filled, suffering and painful way and this affirms to me the need of true compassion by those attending the dying.  Would ending ones life in such a suffering and frightened way diminish the significance of the happiness of the life lived?

While I was reading that section of the book, I had in the back of my mind the trouble I'd felt with myself after getting off the telephone with my loved one.  I had a thought.  Aren't we all dying?  Aren't we all on a trip of unknown duration thru this life toward it's end?  If we look down our individual paths in this life, don't they all converge at this same spot, end in this same place?


If this is so, then don't all people deserve to be treated with the same level of compassion, all of the time.  For who of us can know that  we will be here tomorrow, really, or tonight, or 5 minutes from now?

Those who are facing there end in this life can be frightened, angry and can act out in ways that don't seem to make sense, or direct that anger at people who seem underserving.

Well, this is all of us isn't it?

If I go about treating all people with the respect, dignity, and compassion that I would if they had just been informed that they were about to die from a serious illness, then I might be a little bit closer to treating people the way I'd like to treat them all of the time anyway.  It is a way I'd like to be treated, with honesty, dignity, compassion, love.

We are, each of us, facing the same end of this life, with just about the same information as to what it all means, what happens next, with the same basic questions that cannot be answered.

We have great halls of learning and education that focus on all the different disciplines we might undertake while in this life, but we seem to have so little in the way of education on the matters that are common to each of us, and that truly make us all who we are, human, thinking feeling beings, with some very common challenges.

Fire on the Mountain

After a very dry and breezy month, the forest we live in caught fire this past week.  The smoke could be seen for quite a distance and at night the sky in the north was a glow, as if the sun had decided to set in a new direction.

I scouted the fire, going to a ridge a half mile north and could see that the fire was within another half mile of the ridge.

We had to take a moment to think about what we would do should we need to leave our home if the fire came our way.  Where would we go, what would we take.  Then we thought about what it would mean if we lost what was left behind.

It is an exercise in thought a assessing ones values that proved quite comforting to us.  We realized that there was little we would actually need to take with us, that there was little that we could loose that would devastate us.  A car load for each of us to drive away with was really all we came down to needing, and then most of that was not need as much as want.

The things of real value are not tangible.  All those things that could go up in flames are just things and have no real lasting value.

We eventually got to talking about the positive side of having the property cleared by fire and then starting over from the ground up and how we'd be free to plan a house that we'd build rather than making the one we bought work for us, which it has and does quite well.  In the end there was a kind of freedom in the idea of loosing every thing that we had accumulated over our lives.

The fire burned to the north and then the wind turned and it came back to the south, but it had no fuel to burn as it had just used it all up.  The Spring has just begun and we have an entire summer ahead of us, and the possibility of more fires.

I suppose that knowing that there is little that we actually really need to have makes us rest a little easier and allows us to enjoy all that we do have as they are all luxuries.  What a luxurious life we lead, with more clothes, and food than we can carry.

The Ocean

As James Cameron has just touched the bottom of our deepest sea, we humans have killed another mystery in a world that was once full of mystery.  We, humans, seem to look so hard at the physical nature of our world, dividing and classifying everything we can observe, including ourselves.

It seems to me that with all of our "great" ability to explore, produce, extract and organize, we still have done little to improve our situation with greater happiness, compassion, or peace.  It has been said that all of our technology, industry, medical advances, entertainments, can be likened to giving salt water to a thirsty person, the appearance seems desirable but the effect is to make us more thirsty, and sick.

Because we know how far, how fast, or for how long, it does change the fact that we all thirst, hunger, love, hate, rejoice and suffer, live and die.

For each bit of "advancement", there is a price such that we have not seen much gain but rather a lot of frenzy and chaos.

Exploration, on a truly human scale, could do us some good, but we have mostly looked right past that.  

I stand on my own two feet, 

and move with the energy that is truly mine, 

I need no thing not offered, no thing that was not already here,

 and explore my own reasonable path,

 all that I need to discover is within my reach.

We have reached the tallest peak and the path is a littered highway, the peak a mound of meaningless markers and flags.

We have soared higher than the greatest birds and now our planet is surrounded by dead satellites, flotsam and jetsam.

As we now touch the deepest ocean floor, I wonder at what form of desecration will we put upon it.

I have explored the ocean, the deep and the shallow, the calm and the stormy.  I have got there by my own means, within the limitations of my human condition, by the energy that was offered.  My navigation was made by looking what at was around me, the face of the sky, the birds that flew by, the mood of the water, and by listening to the stories of those who went before me and who now have a quality of spirit like polished glass found by the sea.  I don't think that we will find anything at the bottom of the Mariana Trench that will be as useful to us as what we could get from just standing at the edge of the ocean and watching the waves roll in.

As waves upon the great ocean

we run our course

sometimes gentle, sometimes crashing

always mixing, reflecting, amplifying, canceling

but only for a time.
all end as they began 

Never alone, or separate, or individual

we are simply an observed series of moments and places of the great ocean

The surface of the great ocean has infinite numbers of waves

there are no limits to how many or for how long, and each has it's

own unique path

as some die others are born, it is impossible to count them

There is no need of fear, no ego, no individual need or desire

no wave is a thing unto itself, but just a quality of the great ocean

The end of a wave is not the end of the water that formed it

or the energy that shaped it

these things never belonged to the wave and were always a 

part of the great sea.

The Hat

Death is a hat I wear each day

When the brightness of the sun threatens to cook my brain,

I am relieved by the knowledge that this life

will have it's end

When the rain runs down into my eyes and blurs my vision

I put on my hat and can see a bit better, further

I take it off when crossing the threshold of the church

Those inside seek escape from death, but I keep my hat in my hand,

and I notice that the miter stays in place

While taking a rest at the stream side, under the shade of the tree

I take it from my head and cool my thoughts, sinking deeply into

the bliss of this life, body, heartbeat, tired muscle, gratitude

Eventually I will resume my journey, and restore it to my head

holding it in place when the freshening breeze grabs at it,

the brim keeps me from looking to high up, away from the path I walk,

without me adjusting my whole attitude upward

It is mine, and fits me

I have come to know it as

it has come to know the shape of my head

It is not good or bad, it is just a useful thing,

a necessary thing to carry with me

each day

each night I can leave it on it's hook

and know that in the morning, if morning should come

I can find it easily

and go out into the day

and continue on my Path

Where am I, or how'd I get here

From where do I begin?  

     I am here.  

Where is here?

     This is a journey of it's own that is in no way a simple or short/static answer.  

But, for a beginning this is what I know:  

     In this almost 49 year old body, in this chair, in a wooded part of the world I know to be east, the direction the sun rises, and a bit north, the direction the sun goes away from in the winter, by about 2500 miles of where it was I first knew to be.  

     All else, like this being earth, in a solar system......is convention, assumption, and not so relative.

     What is the difference between my knowledge of where I am now, and my knowledge of where I was when I was in France, or Japan, or any other place that I was flown to or driven to and did not mark the passing of each moment of the journey?

     The first time I came to the Northeast of the United States I flew her on a commercial airline.  I didn't keep track of the flight in it's entirety.  I just took it for granted that I was being taken to where I was going.

Now that I have actually driven the distance from where I first began, to where I am now, and marked every bit of the way, finding it myself, I think I have a better idea of where I am.

     It is important for me to know, just what it is I know of where I am, and to differentiate between this and what I assume or accept as convention.

     I could say that I am on planet earth and that earth is at a certain place in the solar system, galaxy, universe.....

All of that would be convention, what I have chosen to accept as true, and not of my own personal knowledge.  This doesn't mean it isn't so, it just means that I haven't experienced it, really.

There was a time not so long ago when so much of what we knew, was what we experienced.  It was knowledge that was earned by living it.  Now, so much of what we think we know is what we choose to accept as knowledge.  Do you really, really know where these words on the screen are coming from? Going?  Where do they exist?  Can you actually pinpoint them.  (don't actually try this or you might ruin your monitor screen)

In my quest to understand where it is that I am, so that I can understand where my path begins, I need to look around me and asses what it is that I know.  It isn't necessary that I have science reports of climate change or news of oil spills or mountains being mined, or forests being cut down, to recognize the state of my world, the one I live in.  It is as easy as noticing, really looking, listening, smelling, feeling.

My world is crowded.  My world is noise polluted.  My world is chaotic.  It is littered.  Life around me is stifled by tarmac and concrete.  The roads are littered with the bodies of the dead, killed by vehicles who's drivers put schedule or entertainment over the value other, and sometimes their own, life.

The world around me has been changed so that I can't find the food or materials I need to survive, in the area I live. 

I can't walk from my home to visit my friend a few towns away with out having to be threatened by speeding tons of steal (cars) or with having to walk thru privately owned land, or that which is as limited to me as private, but labelled public.

All of this, and more, define where it is that I start my journey from.

More,

There is still a growing and regenerating world around me that can supply much of what I need to, not only survive, but thrive.  Water still falls from the sky and stores under ground, in lakes, and runs in rivers.  Their are still those around me who choose to nurture life, rather than exploit it.  They understand the on going nature of life, and the end of our individual lives, the co-dependancy that benefits us all and the affects we each have on one another.  That these kind of people exist, and choose to be stewards the world is energizing and comforting.

    Though the place I find myself has the scars of generations of abuse, it takes very little effort to produce healing.  

A Path is made with respect and consideration of the elements found to already exist.  It is different than a road in this respect.  Many paths can exist in a place and reveal the place to those who would walk them, never changing the nature of a place.  A road is different in this respect.  One road, forced upon a place can change the nature and integrity of place.  A road cuts through a place and allows one to look away from and disregard what is around it.

A path is something sought after with every step, every moment

Questions, quests, and more questions

In order to embark on this Path a few questions have to be asked:

From where do I begin?

Where is it I intend to go?

In what manner shall I get there?

A journey is in each of these questions.  Each gives rise to more questions.  At some point we either stop asking questions so as to get on with the beginning, or we realize that the questions themselves are the journey, each a stone to be stepped upon, a print to be made in the earth, a blade of grass to be pressed down by our step.