Freedom's True Joy:
A Tentative Investigation
Beginning Basho's "Travel Sketches"—
pay attention, pay attention—
December sunlight, spring-like on the pane
Part of my morning dedication after yoga practice includes reciting the line, "May all beings never be parted from freedom's true joy." Yet no matter how many times I've repeated it, I still can't quite grasp what that means.
Once, long ago, I remember lying under a beech tree, at least I think the tree was beech. Why I was under that beech tree, I don't recall, but I was there, and the day was warm, and that was all, except that I remember watching a little red-headed woodpecker scramble along the branches, doing whatever it is that little red-headed woodpeckers do, and for one silent moment while I lay there, I remember suddenly feeling that I wasn't a young boy watching a little red-headed woodpecker; I was the little red-headed woodpecker, and not only the little red-headed woodpecker, but the beech tree and the grass and the breeze and the boy watching all of this, and something more—the whole world waking up to sunlight and birdsong at the beginning of a new day—but no sooner did I realize that I was feeling these feelings than the world slipped back in place, sighed, and fell back to sleep. Afterwards, I guess I just went on with my day.
I've lived long enough to realize I am not God, but still I wonder, is God me?
"In the world, not of it." Christians, Sufis, the X-Men from Marvel's comics all dwell on this theme. Seems to suggest we need to live life prepositionally. Dependent upon the objects of this reality. Can't survive without them. Aren't really alive with them. Kind of a conundrum.
In Natalie Goldberg's The Great Failure, she's just described her father's final moments:
" 'It's so final,' my mother whispers. I put my hand on her shoulder.
"When the wrist restraints are untied, the full life of my father roars out and fills the room. He is a wild thing, a white lion. He arches his back and faces the window, the death rattle comes from his throat, and he is free, gone. He does not look back; he does not linger. You feel it. Something much brighter than this life calls him, and he charges on."
I often give thanks to my grandmother for allowing me to be with her for her final moment. Nothing was pretty or peaceful about it, that final breath—the body's natural instincts to live taking over—but I wasn't afraid for my grandmother; I was only filled with enormous grief for me.
December rain
festive colours bleed together
on wet asphalt
A woman whose baby had died went to the Buddha to plead with him to bring her child back to life. The Buddha told her that he would do it on one condition: the woman needed to go the each household in the village and find a family who had not experienced losing a loved one. Desperately, the woman begins to implore at each door; in a little while, she returns to the Buddha, thanks him, and goes off to bury her child. No comfort here. It is; that's it.
In the bookstore, a woman's voice calling, asking urgently, "Sunshine, where are you?"; a few rows over, a little child's confident reply, "I'm right here."
Basho explains, "What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding, and returning to the world of our daily experience to seek therein the truth of beauty. No matter what we may be doing at any given moment, we must not forget that it has a bearing upon our everlasting self which is poetry."
New Year's Day;
geese flock on the pond,
one goose, head in water, ass in air
Copyright 2007 by Fred Meissner
Fred writes:
