Barry Garden Path

I really don’t think about death very much.   However, this morning Rilke reminded me of the significance of death.   In a strange kind of manner, my thought of death has brought me into a greater awareness of my current experiences of joy, love, sorrow, pain.   Even before I die, death can play a pivotal role in my life and give a deeper awareness of everything that precedes it.  Death can walk with me as a friend.

Death is the exclamation point at the end of my life that gives nuanced meaning and special emphasis right now to all that goes before it.   As I think about this, I am resolved not to wait until death to realize all that might have been.  I do  not want to find myself grasping for a life never experienced, never lived.

I am determined not to hear myself mumble, “So that’s what it was all about!”   I fondly hope that my death will be a moment when I look forward with curiosity and not back with regret.

I think that my death may possibly be a moment when I realize with clarity just what has been happening and what might have been if I were more awake and attentive.   That is when there will be no more distractions, no more living in the imagined future or the remembered  past.   I expect my death will be a confrontation with reality unlike anything I have experienced before.   It may be my closest encounter with certainty.  It will be reality in bold print.

I think my death has already  taught me something today, without my having to experience it yet.   I now want to be even more awake and more attentive to each passing now.   I want to do the dishes with awareness, and experience the rinsing of pots with an attention and presence that gives joy.    I want to love every moment that passes with all the open-heartedness I can muster.   I want in this next moment to be as ardently attentive as I will be in my last.

 

I am glad that there are times that my eyes can tenderly release what they see.   In those moments, my mind takes a break and no longer tries to impose order on what my eyes see.   My mind stops trying to fabricate a world that makes sense and has some connection to what I previously experienced.   In those moments and for the first time,  I see someone, a plant, a cloud.   I am able to look past all the offerings coming from my mind, and come face to face with what is before me.  It is a totally new and fresh experience.

I know that my mind is active any time that I have my eyes open.   It is constantly working to make sense of anything that I am looking at.   Mainly, my mind is relating the image to what I have experienced before, imposing on the image all that I can recall of my past experience that most closely matches the image.

What I experience is often something that my mind makes up on the spur of the moment, on the instigation of what I am seeing.   It interprets what my eyes experience and gives meaning to all those photons registering on my retina.   I often get a feeling of recognition when my mind tells me that I have seen this chair before, I know what it feels like, I know what it can do.

Sometimes my mind goes into fibrillation mode when I see a confusing scene, and I have to make a snap interpretation.   My mind responds to my eyes and tells me what I am seeing.   Often, I have to revise that interpretation of what I have seen.

It is hard to constantly tell my mind to take a break and just let me see things “for the first time” without any reference to my past experience.   For me, this is what mindful awareness is all about.    Awareness is being able to look beyond the mind-enhanced image and have a fresh and new experience, without the thought limitations.

When I am able to set aside my mental images, I am better able to experience someone, a plant, a cloud with an open heart.   Reality is something my heart is best at grasping.    My heart is so much more reliable than my mind.   But first, my eyes have to release what they think  they see, and I can then see beyond.

 

 

I intend this to be a year of ‘everywhere joy in relation, nowhere in grasping.’  These seven words were put in my mind by Rilke this morning, and they are very fitting for so much of my daily struggles.   I have a strong desire to create relation with the world around me, including my garden and many people.  This is how I create my reality.  I establish relation when I maintain mindful awareness.

Relation happens when I  keep an open heart and is a source of great joy.   It is so attractive that it is hard for me to avoid grasping.   I want to give permanence to a reality that is not lasting.    The moment passes and is gone.   The relation is there and quickly makes way for the next.  The joy is real, it surges throughout my body.   And it too makes way for the next.

I want the intensity of relation, and I want it without attempting to grasp it.   I want to constantly plunge into the new.

My life has seemed like a string of beginnings.  I have experienced  big beginnings and small ones.   I can think of five times when my life took a significant change of direction because I made a big decision.   It seems that these changes were large enough that I felt I was beginning a new life.   And so it turned out to be true.

This morning I began a new year, and while it is truly a new beginning, it doesn’t seem that monumental.    Just the same, I have expressed my intention to begin being more  mindful about how I live out my dependency on my friends, my companions.

This morning I also began a new day as I chose to become awake.   Then I began to roll to the right and place my feet on the floor.    One decision after another,  one beginning following the one before.   Every step, I suppose, is a new beginning.   Every step is a bold movement into uncertainty.  It has an unpredictable outcome, and I move into that world of ambiguity.

I want every step, every movement to begin an open-ended adventure.   The more mindful of what I am doing, the more I am aware that every step opens a vast array of possibilities.   Each step is a new experience, a new lived moment.

So far, my life has been a succession of new lives on a large scale and on a small moment-to-moment scale.    I have begun so many new lives that it almost seems like a continuity.    But I know each passing moment is as fresh, new and unpredictable as the last.    That is how I want to experience them.

I spent most of my adult life trying to lessen the impact of the waste of Minnesota society.   Apart from some focused successes, I can mainly look back on mournful monuments of discarded waste in the land, water and air.  I see now a wide range of memorials to parts of the earth we altered and destroyed in a frenzy of consumption.   I don’t see how this can continue.

All this dumped waste surrounds us as our accusing souvenirs of a land pillaged by us and our recent ancestors.   The piles of waste and rubble are reminders of how we took from the earth more than we could truly use in reasonable time and in a respectful manner.   We attempted to satisfy our immediate wants and cravings, then quickly moved on.   The ephemeral benefit has been bought at the sacrifice of materials that took many life-times to fashion.

We no longer satisfy our needs by simply consuming the plants and animals that come from the earth.   We now consume the earth itself in an effort to give substance to the objects of our craving.   These monuments to our grasping are not things of beauty.

Now I can begin to relax, at least a little.    My two sons have survived just over twenty years and are now young men.   I am relieved that they are now launched into young adulthood, alive and without serious scars.

For me, there is no more anxious driving on winter roads, constantly attentive to that tiny, precious cargo in the back seat, going home from his hospital of origin.   There is no more standing next to his bed, listening to his rhythmic breathing, assuring myself that he is still alive.   I’ve not yet done anything tragic.  He survives.

I no longer stare at the young students getting off the school bus, looking for that familiar face and coat that assures me that he has made it through another perilous day at school on his own.   I am almost ready to admit that my vigilance has prevented his drowning in the lake at my cabin.   Childhood, lake and cabin are finally proven compatible.

I may be ready to give up lying slightly asleep in bed, half-listening for the assuring slam of the back door that announces that my son has survived another late-night trip home on the bus.

Parenthood is a perilous time for vulnerable offspring, and it is such a relief that success is in sight.   There were no multiple eggs in a nest, most of whom were destined to be food for others.  There was just a solitary tiny baby boy, one at a time.   Each needed constant attention, routine feeding, and vigilant protection.   The attention, feeding and protection has gone on for many years, even though the level of vigilance has gradually diminished.

It is a relief that, though the fledglings may return to the nest, they have proven that they can survive on their own without a vigilant parent.  Whew!

I know my body houses memories.    That is where the memory of the cereal I just ate will be for the rest of my time.   Within this husk of skin, supported by bones and muscle, are a seemingly infinite number of memories.   Where else are they if not in this body.   Unless I have some kind of spiritual external hard drive that stores a back-up supply of memories, everything is inside this aging skin.

I don’t know how I hold in this body all the traces of past experiences, the joys and sorrows, the pleasures and pains, the hopes and disappointments.   I know that I cannot intentionally recall all past experiences.  But I unexpectedly see the images of my past when an experience  spontaneously retrieves the memory of a previous one.  I draw upon my past when a dream pulls images and events from my storehouse of memories.

I wonder how much of a memory the cells of my body have.   Can they remember what it was like before they multiplied repeatedly to form this cooperative collection of cells that makes up my body.   Within them, and certainly in my DNA, is the memory of what it was like to form fish then reptiles and other primates.   These were the senarios of past events that were played out in the early weeks of my body when it engaged in genetic recall of what it was like to live with a previous form.

So how far back does this body memory go and is there a way that I can get access to these stored memories?  I would like it if my body could remind me of what it was like before its form could support human intelligence.   It would be such an adventure if my body could recall what it was like when molecules discovered they could join and support the spark of life.   I wonder what it was like when cosmic dust spread throughout the universe, and eventually formed our planet.

I think my body knows.    All those memories are stored deep in the fibers that make up the cells that give my body form and support life.   Somewhere inside of me is the memory of that act of intelligence that launched this whole event.   Maybe I’m thinking it right now.

For me, any words that capture and convey experience is poetry.   Poetry is more than describing an experience or telling a story.   It is an invitation to experience the same thing that the poet has experienced.   It draws me into the inner life  of the poet.

Poetry cannot be forced or made up, it must be felt with all the depth and power of being actually present.   A poet does not simply observe but enters into the source of inspiration.   The poet then offers the same experience to the reader or listener in the art form we call poetry.

For me, as the reader or listener, it is a whole body experience, felt through an open heart.  Poetry is a sensuous experience, and it is best if I not shy away from it.

Poetry conveys more than a feeling.   Poetry conveys the experience of actually being there, of being present.   This is not the work of the mind trying to understand a poem, but the work of the heart absorbing the experience.   If the analytical mind has to be relied on too much, it obscures the experience of the poet.

To hear the voice of the poet, my rational mind must first quiet down.   Then I can listen to the voice that rises from within.   Heard this way, poetry allows me to listen too my own inner voice which at that moment has become one with that of the poet.

Poetry asks me to let go and be present in the sound and images of the words.   I become present as I would be in a majestic valley or velvet forest.   Every cell of my being is called to attention and summoned to tingle with excitement.   The words of the poet urge me to yield to a reality that the poet experienced.

Through poetry, I am able to enter into the awareness of another.  I experience the self of the poet.  I enter into their bones, their blood-stream, their skin.   We share our connective oneness.

When I become totally open to a poem, I make  the poet present.    The poet’s experience is at this instant my experience.

Every reading of a poem is a new experience.  A poem when read is a new encounter, never to be exactly repeated.   When I bring myself to a poem, it is a new reality each time.

Being a “poet” may be a license to write, but no one is truly a poet until their experience is felt and absorbed by others.    I am not a reader of poetry until I feel and absorb the experience of the poet.

My son talks about developing super powers.   His imagination has been influenced by what he has seen in myths like “X Men”.  I like to think that he simply has a craving for abilities that he already has but hasn’t yet uncovered. I am thrilled that he is willing to explore what those abilities might be.

It has been my life-long search that finally recognized the abilities I had but never used.   My practice of mindfulness, aided by meditation, has helped me realize that I have power I never anticipated.   I am gradually beginning to learn how to see beyond appearances, and sometimes it seems that I have entered another, alternate reality.    Things are no longer what they seemed a year ago.

I am learning to see and hear with my whole body, not just my eyes and ears.   A touch with my hand is no longer an isolated experience but something that resonates through my whole physical self.   A hug is an experience of someone’s presence that radiates awareness through my entire body.

I know this is not a discovery of some kind of super power but a simple realization of what I can do as a human being living in the 21st century.   For so much of my life I have practiced at living in a world of appearances.   I have been content and become adept at it.   I am just beginning to learn how to be aware of what lies beyond appearances.   I walk through my garden with a new kind of vision.   I enjoy it so much more.

I am learning that by not staring, I can see beyond.   I am able to see with a relaxed vision that has developed only by practice.   It is an ability I was born with, but only partly used.    Now that I have lifted the corner of the veil, I am excited to see what is really there.

I have only recently been paying attention  to my places of refuge. I lately saw how my sitting meditation offered me a refuge from the pain of letting go.   There I could practice Tonglen and absorb the pain without its barb.   I found refuge on my cushion.   It was a safe place where I could accept the pain and struggle.

I often find refuge in my sangha.   It is a small community of companions, we are attentive of one another, we create a safe place to unfold and expose our inner awareness if we choose.   We are deeply accepting and support the unique, but similar, path each of us is on.

I take refuge in my friends.   Their attentiveness assures me that I matter, that I exist, that I am of value.   I want to be a refuge for each of them.   I want to be a place of recognition and assurance for them.   I want them to  rely on me to be a refuge where they can be themselves and feel my unconditional acceptance.  I want to mirror their goodness for them.

My garden is a refuge, in both summer and winter.  The constant animation of the garden is like the soothing embrace of a warm down comforter.   We give one another life and renewal.  We cleanse one another of anything that restricts our growth.    While my cabin is only an occasional refuge, it is like my garden and is always on the margins of my mind.

I am learning to become my refuge.   There are many times that I take refuge within my own skin.   This is one of the benefits of meditation.   I learn and practice how to feel refuge in myself, from my head to my toes.   Sometimes I find total acceptance in this refuge;  sometimes there is a deep peace.