The Whole of It

White-Rumped Shama and Warbling White-Eye bathing in a bowl

 

The Whole of It

Like these birds inside the bowl

You are bathing in the Whole

Conditioned early to see separation

No surprise we feel desperation

Words like “Either/Or” and “I”

Are knives that divvy up the pie

Moving towards “Both/And” and “We”

Creates the space for “Us” to "Be"

Behold the rain and sun and breeze

And praise the photosynthesis of trees

Without it All, you could not be

Unclench the self and newly see

Simply bathing in pure delight

Within awareness, a shift of insight

Like food offered to the begging bowl

Life is truly lived within the Whole

The Wake-Up Call

Mist on the Pond (or The Cloud of Unknowing)

 So this morning, I had a little wake-up call. 

        Little, in that I'm still here writing this to you 🤗.

                Wake-Up, in the sense that we often (always?) take for granted our very existence.

So what, exactly, happened?  Well, I was up early in the morning as is my norm, sitting out on the deck of our cottage.  Usually doing a sitting meditation, or listening to a dharma talk.  Today I was listening to a podcast, and was captivated by the beauty of the morning.  I wanted to capture it -- take a picture or a movie (like above) to try to show what I was seeing, and help me remember it.

At one point I decided to walk down to our dock to photograph the early morning fog sweeping along the glassy surface of the pond.  We have some funky stairs (tilted on angle) that need to be replaced, and we had just finished 24 hours of pretty hard rain.  So the steps, while water-free, were much more slick than they appeared to be, and then Whoosh, my feet slid out from under me.

Have you ever felt time slow down?  As I crashed to the ground, I waited to find out where the pain would arrive.  Fortunately for me, my butt and shoulder took the brunt of the fall along the edges of the steps (and not my head).  I had survived, thanks to nothing but dumb luck.

I could even perceive two alternate futures emerge from that slip.  The one that's writing this blog post, and the one that remained unconscious (or worse) on the steps until Carol arose and started to wonder where the heck I was.  Wouldn't that have been a different life trajectory?

            One moment here, blissfully enjoying the scenery,  
            And then ... Wham ... lights out (for a while or forever).

I'm not trying to be overly dramatic.  That's not the point of this story.  But just take a moment to realize, we are all one incident away from a life-altering or life-ending trajectory.  That is the very nature of our existence.

Now that may sound Bad to most people, but it's really Not.  Not good or bad.  It just is.  

So what should you take away from this story, if that is true?  Just this:

Your life is a very precious gift.  The odds of You being here right now are extraordinarily slim.  Savor that good fortune.  Don't waste a minute of your precious life on anger or hatred or self-recrimination.  Indeed, Wake Up to the unfathomability of your life just as it is, right here, right now.  With all its "apparent" lack of perceived perfection, lack of financial security, lack of fulfillment or meaning.  

You're just looking through the wrong end of the telescope.  Turn it around and see the magnificence in every ordinary thing around you, and then let yourself blur the apparent boundaries of what you sense, and realize you are very much a part of that as well.  

Not you and the other and the 10,000 things.  But just this ... right now ... right here.  And that includes everything and nothing, or no thing.  It's a conundrum only when you view the world as if from the homunculus in your head.  Like those magic eye pictures, you don't easily see the 3D image because of how you have been conditioned to look.

Drop your focus and look through the image.  Stop trying to analyze everything, control everything, plan everything.  Go with the flow sounds pretty trite, but it is also pretty accurate.  That is what life is ... the flow of the universe itself.  An infinite set of processes continually interacting with each other.  And thou art that.

Get out in Nature, as living objects may make this easier to recognize, or re-cognize.  But you can do it anywhere.  Everything you think of as a thing is more amazing than you can possibly fathom.  

Seeing everything with wonder and awe through a fresh set of eyes

If you have a science background, you probably realize that the chair you are sitting on is not as it  appears.  It is not a solid object, even though it looks and feels that way to your senses.  It is 99.9999999% empty space.  Trust me on this if you don't know that to be true*.

So just appreciate the unfathomability of life, and try to drop another construct of your mind.  You do not have a permanent self.  You are really not who ... you ... think you are.  Really -- just like that chair.  But even more, much more, than that.

The construct that needs to be de-constructed is that you are here, reading this post (BTW, congrats that you've made it this far 🥳), and the rest of the world is out there.  That's just not how life, the universe, and existence itself work.  That may be how they appear to work, but it simply isn't so.

Like the late David Foster Wallace observed in his classic commencement speech**:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

This is all about being open to and aware of Life, and realizing how little we truly know and how much we are conditioned in this world (by our DNA, our upbringing, society, culture, etc.)  

So what I hope for anyone reading this, is that you too have The Wake-Up Call.  Hopefully the benevolent kind, but no matter the circumstances, it can be used to re-focus your attention, increase your awareness, and bring wonder and awe into your life.

Or better, let you re-cognize the wonder and awe of being a part of this very existence, right here, right now, nothing special, just this, just this.

-----------------------------------------------------

*  Or look it up if you like -- here's a 3-minute listen:  Why Your Butt Doesn't Fall Through The Chair.

** I think this video adaptation is awesome:  This is Water, by David Foster Wallace

Epilog:  So you may be familiar with the way we can get somewhat attached, maybe dependent, perhaps even addicted to our portable electronic devices (e.g., smart phones and watches).  One might even say that they have come to feel like a bionic extension of one's self.  

Well then, I guess I've taken one small step at putting a crack into my conceptual self.  Here is the one (and thankfully only) real casualty (beyond some scrapes and bruises) from my wake-up call today, not noticed until well after the event (when I went to check the weather forecast):

Shattered image of myself, er, my Apple Watch

And isn't it interesting that my body will self-repair with only healthy food, gentle movement, and adequate rest, but my watch is now kaput, and destined for Apple's recycling center.  That's also an interesting "life" lesson.  

Seeing Through the Veil

 

Seeing Through the Veil, Honolulu Museum of Art (unknown pieces of art in storage), Honolulu, HI, December 2016,
Nikon D600 with FX 28-300mm VR lens, 160mm,1/15 sec @ f5.6, ISO 1000, -0.67 EV, no flash © Steven Crisp

This morning I was sitting at my desk, listening to the multitude of birds that begin their singing at the crack of dawn.  I'm not complaining ;-)   They all have different songs, and songs within songs, even discordant clicks and cackles, perhaps warning of this human illuminating their space so early.

One of the birds we are blessed with is the White-Rumped Shama, a local visitor that we've coaxed into singing, and a virtuoso performance I observed while hiking elsewhere on Oahu.   These formerly Asian song birds were brought here to be caged in local gardens.  Eventually released into the wild in the late 1930s, they now bless us daily with their melodic songs as they seem to celebrate their freedom.  Anyways, something about the immersion in this avian chorus, and the glistening dew that emerged after sunrise, brought me into another way of being.  Bubbling up in my head were the words "it seems as if" and the recognition that how we usually perceive the world is not "reality," which became "but it is not."

And in this case, on this morning, that led to the emergence of these words.  I hope they are as interesting for you to read and perhaps ponder, as they were for me to write (and edit and tweak and tweak some more) until they captured the essence of the unfolding flow.  

Oh, and about the photo above, which I picked from my photo library based on my first draft of these words.  This was from a trip with an "insider" to the Honolulu Museum of Art, and while my wife and our friend were roaming through the art displays, I was roaming far and wide with my camera.  And I stumbled upon a location where various pieces of art had been collected together and covered with plastic (perhaps it was "out with the old, in with the new").  Anyways, when I saw this photo, the words "seeing through the veil" came too me as this Buddha is meditating with his iPhone behind plastic, or so it appears.  Haha, somehow, it seemed appropriate, and prompted yet more revisions ;-)

                Seeing Through the Veil

           (It Seems As If … But It Is Not)

It seems as if … 

You were born into this world

To learn and to love and to live your life 

With various struggles and occasional triumphs

With the only guaranteed certainty of life, being death

… But it is not

It seems as if … 

You are a unique individual, with a name, and a face

And tell-tale characteristics, as different from me as from

The White-Rumped Shama's melodic birdsong at dawn 

And this morning’s cool glistening dew just after sunrise

… But it is not

It seems as if … 

You find comfort and control in categorizing and dividing up the world

Preferring, labeling, judging, or prejudicing your "sense"

Of friend or foe, right or wrong, saint or sinner

And good or bad (or maybe even evil)

… But it is not

It seems as if …

You are searching for that great insight; that "aha" moment

On a path, perhaps, to find some spiritual truth, or at least some inner-resonance

Seeking God or Nirvana or Enlightenment, or maybe just a respite from your own mind

To bring you inner peace, compassion and joy

… But it is not

But what if …

You and your life were much simpler than all of that?

What if ... you already are enough, exactly as you are now, and always have been?

What if ... you and me and everything, including that melodic birdsong, are simply one?

One what, you may ask ... one thing?    No.    No  thing.    Nothing.

Quite simply:  "Just This" ... Life, emerging, creating, flowing, dancing, loving, smiling

And what if …

Words are fundamentally inadequate to express this interdependent totality?

What if ... duality is but an illusion, no subject or object existing in isolation?

What if ... there is NoThing for the self to examine, because the whole is always emerging?

What if ... the “10,000 Things” are illusory, for there are “not two” nor is there even “one”?

But even this it is not 

        ... it is so, so much simpler (and mysterious and amazing)

                … it is what it is 

                        ... not you or me 

                                ... just dancing, behind the veil

                                        ... now, eternally now 

                                                ... within the flow

                                                        ... ahhh, resting, breathing, smiling arises

Let yourself dissolve

Sparkling Ripples, Yellowstone Lake, Wyoming, May 2008, Nikon D40 with 18-200mm VR lens, Focal length 80mm, Exposure 1/200 sec @ f18, ISO 200, exposure bias -2/3 stop, no flash, circular polarizing filter, color and contrast adjusted in iPhoto. © Steven Crisp [Click on the photo to enlarge]

Such a simple concept. No. Such a powerful action.

Let yourself dissolve. Just let your "self" dissolve.

Not by any effort. Rather, lack of effort.

Simply be. And then you will know.

Like bubbles in the sea,
All the worlds arise in you.

Know you are the Self.
Know you are one.

Let yourself dissolve.

You see the world.
But like the snake in the rope,
It is not really there.

You are pure.

Let yourself dissolve.

-- Ashtavakra Gita 5:2-3

It's a mystery

Frosty edges, Amherst, NH, November 2006, HP Photosmart R817, Exposure 1/40 sec @ f2.8, ISO 200, no flash © Steven Crisp [Click on the photo to enlarge]

It is a mystery, this life of ours, is it not? So many processes we do not fully understand. So many connections we can't begin to visualize. So we make up gods and godesses to fill in all of our gaps. Like the ice crystals on the edge of this leaf, even they are but a coating on the rich and complex edge of our universe of understanding. It goes so much deeper. It is much more intricate.

Should we try to understand? Well, why not. Why not let our scientific and spiritual inquiries takes us just as far as they can. And I suspect, we will add more to our already encyclopedic knowledge. And yet, even that will just illuminate how much more there is that we do not really understand.

So feel free to continue on with these quests. Full speed ahead at making this world a "better" place to be. Just keep in mind everyone and everything as you do so. For we really are all just a part of the same mystery we call life.

And keep in mind that even during such pursuit of knowledge, sometimes we need to step back from our conceptual understanding of life, and just live.

Being your true self, being your true nature, is different than experiencing it with thought. Realize that you are the mystery, and that you can’t really look at the mystery because you are only capable of looking from the mystery. There is a very awake, alive, and loving mystery, and that’s what is seeing through your eyes at this moment. That’s what is hearing through your ears at this moment. Instead of trying to figure it all out, which is impossible, I suggest you ask, "What’s ultimately behind this set of eyes?" Turn around to see what is looking. Encounter pure mystery, which is pure spirit, and wake up to what you are.

The mystery always takes care of itself -- as long as we are not addicted to following concepts. This addiction cuts off your access to the mystery. It’s like having a jewel in your pocket but you can’t get your hand into the pocket to pull it out. When you deeply know that you are the mystery experiencing itself, you realize that’s all that is ever happening. Whether you call an experience a me or a you, a good day or a rotten day, beauty or ugliness, compassion or cruelty -- it’s all still the mystery experiencing itself, extending itself into time and form. That’s all that is happening.

If this understanding is held only in your head, you can know it but you are not being it. The head is saying, "Oh, I know, I’m the mystery," and yet your body is acting like it didn’t get the message. It’s saying, "I’m still somebody, and I’ve got all these anxious thoughts and wants and desires." When we are being it knowingly, the whole being receives the message. And when the whole body receives the message, it’s like air going out of a balloon. When all the contradiction, turmoil, and searching for this and that deflates, there is the experience that the body is an extension of the mystery. Then the body can easily be moved by the mystery, by pure spirit.

-- Adyashanti, From "Emptiness Dancing"