As
I arrived on the Buffalo River Saturday morning for my first ever regatta in
which my son would be rowing, I was struck by the quality of the morning. It was a crisp, cold fall day with a cloudless,
poignant blue sky. Sitting in the warmth
of my car I felt momentarily bewildered.
Then, the sun began to rise and penetrate my mind’s fog and
uncertainty. I began to read the
following words from the bestseller, Turning the Mind Into an Ally:
“Everything
is always coming together and falling apart, and it doesn’t seem to pose a
problem for anyone but us. Spring knows
how to be summer and autumn leaves know how to fall down. Coming together and falling apart is the
movement of time, the movement of life.”
Funny
since I had just been thinking about the autumn leaves and their brilliant
display of color and beauty albeit fleeting.
Knowing that the natural beauty would only last for a very short while
made them seem even more stunningly lovely.
Come to think of it, anything or anyone only last for a very short while
but that doesn’t diminish the timeless beauty of any of us. The beauty and goodness just keep going.
This
has been one magnificent fall, a jubilation of color. My neighbor’s beech tree across the street
was bursting with color for weeks as if on fire from the inside, a grand finale
of color day after day this fall. The
mix of yellow and orange were luminous and pulsated when I looked in the tree’s
direction. I could feel the wakeful
quality of the tree and its brilliance. The
leaves look as if they are fluorescent, aglow in shades of orange, red, yellow
and sour apple green.
Like
that one true love we feel will be in our hearts forever, I feel this fall and the
beech tree ablaze with golden shining hues of yellow and orange will reside
within my heart for always. That beech’s colorful display was here and alive one
day, and then, the next day I drive by and all the leaves are down. What a sad but true moment. I felt so open in this sensory experience of true
perception. Yet like that one true love,
the leaves fall and we acknowledge that and move on eventually. Okay there may be some clinging but
eventually we must move forward. And
then, one day we wake up and that dry, hollow emptiness is gone like the leaves
from the tree.
This
same week of the beech tree’s once upon a moment brilliance that had all fallen
to the ground, this human being, this mom, this woman was opened by the
connection, the raw, absolute, beautiful, impermanent quality of the connection with our world. And my body and its nerve
endings tingled with reminders of aliveness.
As
I began this writing, I was on the Buffalo River and had been struggling with where
I belong; I then recovered my mind as I walked into the crisp fall morning
surrounded by Buffalo’s grain mills of the river. I glanced down to see a single late summer
hold out of a yellow flower. Its steadfastness
and courage touched my heart. On this October
morning as I moved through time, I was aware that being awake and aware in the
present helps create a more peaceful future.
After about ten minutes of standing somewhat awkwardly alone in the middle
of the regatta crowd, my son came to me and suggested I go back to the
car. I figured that this would make him
more comfortable, to not see his mom looking so alone. I thanked him and moved on to my spot for the
day. I spread out my fleece blanket upon
a large granite boulder, took my seat, covered my thighs with another fleece
blanket, and began to eat an apple. Indeed
I was alone but in the company of many others.
I
contentedly sat there perched upon that rock and contemplated emptiness. We often think of emptiness as the lack of
something. For me, emptiness began to take
on a new quality and meaning, empty as in making space within me, my mind, my
heart, my path, my life for others to enter my life. The making of that room took practice, a
practice of mindfulness, peacefulness, and compassion. Practicing loving kindness helps me to make
room for others, family, friends, strangers and even those who challenge me. It occurred to me that our mind in its most
awakened state is content and peaceful and joyous by its very nature; that this
nature is basic goodness and it is all of our birthright. It belongs to no one in
particular, no religion, no philosophy, no nation, no political party. It is ours, all of ours.
These
thoughts were interrupted by the natural elegance and form of our children carrying
down their boats. The teamwork of putting
in the boats for the launch was a visual reminder of how much we really are all
connected. The way they carried down the
shells and flipped them on cue carefully setting them on the side of the dock. The grace of human synchronicity as they worked as one
body and mind.
With
the boats in the water, and the rowers launched and working their way upstream
for the start of the race, my mind returned to the thoughts that I had
temporarily put on hold. We just keep
seeking the next right thing that will work out in our lives. The next right moment of hoping for what our
heart’s desire actually takes us right out of the place our heart is most at home,
the present. If we are fully engaged in the
sensory realm, engaging our sense perceptions helps us to feel peace and the
emptiness which is really a magical place.
It is luminous and awake like the autumn splendor. When we empty and make space within us we
lighten our load. We offload our
worries, anxieties, fears, and concerns over the future or that we are not
enough. Here in the present we are
enough, there are no qualifications or anything really for or against us. There is this sense that there is absolutely
nothing missing from our life. Like
right now as I script this, my son is playing a game, my other son is with his
papa, and I am sipping on a glass of red to a
recording of Maynard Ferguson Orchestra.
There is no other place for me to be in this world but here alone with
me surrounded by my writing with contentment and joy in my heart.
“No matter what we do to hold ourselves
together, the truth is that we are always falling apart.”
(Quotes from Turning the Mind Into an Ally, Sakyong Mipham)
