The temple bell stops
But the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers
– Matsuo Bashō
Listening
The Way We Are
I’m re-reading Toni Packer’s wonderful book The Wonder of Presence: And The Way of Meditative Inquiry.
She writes of when she and her husband saw Krishnamurti speak. Her husband “grew up in a puritanical family and was raised to be modest and honest, imbued with a strong drive for bettering himself. The idea of improving himself, of becoming a better person, was a strong motive in his family.” When her husband heard Krishnamurti speak about “human beings’ everlasting endeavors to become something or somebody in the future”, he was struck. He ran to her laughing and light. “Here I’ve been attempting to become a better person all my life – ha ha ha ha ha.”
I’m reminded of when I heard Marion Rosen, my teacher of Rosen Method, say “Perfection is static.” I nearly fell off my chair. What? I’d been trying to be “perfect” all my life and now I was hearing that it wasn’t something I should want or desire. First, what is “perfect” and second where is movement there.
Toni Parker describes this as direct insight which is indescribable, but then she goes on. “It is that wondrous state of being in which the conditioned personality reveals itself for what it is – conditioning giving way to wholeness without lack, all things, people, mountains and oak trees being wondrously the way they are, nothing to be faulted, nothing to be improved.”
I don’t always remember this about striving and perfection but I do think walls have fallen around my perception of who, or what I, the crazy-making I, might be.
Since my walk at Muir Woods, I feel myself curving in delight, immersing in a place where time is just a concept imposed on a beautiful living, changing world we share.
Moss on Trees
When I was a Girl Scout in Des Moines, Iowa, I learned that if I was lost in a forest, to look for moss as it would be growing on the north side of trees. Yesterday at Muir Woods I saw moss growing 360 degrees around a tree. There is moisture at Muir Woods and maybe it is for us to feel and invite fluidity flowing 360 degrees around and in us too.
As to judgment, Ram Dass had this to say:
When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree. The minute you get near humans, you lose all of that. And you are constantly saying, ‘you’re too this, or I’m too this.’ That judging mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.
Yesterday I saw a man setting up his violin to serenade the trees. The creek was so loud I didn’t hear his playing but I’m sure the trees felt the vibrations and intention stirring through their cells. Today I receive myself as a tree.
Muir Woods
Yesterday I wanted to see if the salmon were in Redwood Creek so I parked above and walked down. The path was wet and it was narrow with roots, so I was careful but coming back up, I slipped, and so as not to fall into a well of redwood trees, grabbed a tree, wrenching my leg and foot, and wrenched it further pulling myself up to stand firmly on slanted ground. Slowly and painfully, I limped my way back to the car.
Today I rest, leg propped up by a fire with books as comfort and support. I come to Simone Weil’s book Gravity and Grace.
“Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter when there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.”
Yesterday, I learned from a ranger that though I didn’t see a salmon, one was seen three days ago, and the big push may come with this next rain. The creek has to be just the right depth for the salmon to make it up to reproduce. There’s a number to call at Muir Woods to get the news on the salmon, and there’s something so exciting in knowing what this next storm brings, that I feel currents flowing in me, inviting what’s new as I open to the grace in empty space.
Movement
Today I’m with how much my life, our lives, are influenced by the flow of water, the cycle of water. In my case, I’ve known and ridden on the Des Moines river, the Mississippi river, the Intercoastal Waterway, the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and the San Diego and San Francisco Bay.
When we lived in Des Moines, Iowa my father built a boat in the garage so we could go out boating. When we moved to a house outside Bettendorf, Iowa we had that boat for floating and water skiing on the Mississippi river.
We moved there when I was nine. I named our new puppy,, a Weimeraner, Mr. Sippi. My grandmother gave me Mark Twain’s memoir Life on the Mississippi to read. One may know only a part of a river, and yet be influenced by the whole.
Today I perused Wikipedia to learn: The Mississippi River begins as a trickle flowing out of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota. From there the river flows 2,348 miles until it pours into the Gulf of Mexico below New Orleans. The Mississippi River drains 33 states and its watershed covers one-half of the nation.
The Missouri river, the longest river in the US – North America flows 2,341 miles from its headwaters at the confluence of the Gallatin, Madison, and Jefferson Rivers in the Rocky Mountains at Three Forks, Montana, to its confluence with the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri. It crosses seven states: Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.
If we consider the Mississippi-Missouri river system, the total length forms the world’s fourth longest river, after the Amazon, Nile, and Yangtze rivers.
The song This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land comes to mind. Today we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. at a time when a man who foments division is receiving votes.
A tender is a small ship that carries people and supplies to and from a larger ship and shore. How can we tender and be tender with ourselves as we navigate the rivers that connect, and sometimes divide?
In the movie Muscle Shoals, Blacks and Whites are shown playing music together with no noticing of skin color at all. A river reflects the ground beneath and the colors of the sky. May we, too, unite in meeting what comes with tender eyes as we trust the landing, integration, and fluidity of water and light.
The Elements
Last night I watched the documentary Muscle Shoals. It’s about perseverance, hard work and the connective and collective power of music guided by the sounds of the Tennessee river in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The native people call it the Singing River.
I lived on the Mississippi River for fifth grade and part of sixth so I returned to the rhythm of living by the movement of a river, the momentum and ease in watching life flow by. My mother said it was hard to get anything done when the river called like a friend to be listened to, and to listen and soothe.
It’s raining today. I made a fire and sat by the fireplace, finding my own rhythm reflected in the elements of which I’m made and with which I flow – earth, water, fire, wind, and air giving space.
Perception
I spent the last two days with my four year old grandson. Part of the time we were at his school as he likes me there and I like to be there. The children seem so grown up with their questions and desire to touch and be near me. I feel drawn into noticing and the curious intimacy of individual and group play.
I appreciate the children’s choice in their array of clothes. I wasn’t sure about my grandson’s choice of red sequined pants for the day but then I saw another in his Christmas pajamas and girls waltzed by as princesses and fairies, and I realized every day is what we perceive of as Halloween when you’re four. The hair of some of the girls dances with barrettes, ribbons, and bows.
I brought grandson a book on the eyes of various creatures, showing the different eyes that see us, from owls to dragonflies, snails to cuttlefish, parrots to gorillas, horses, dogs and cats. We are seen even as we’re seeing and the world is rich with collecting rays of delight.
Light
The pineal gland is a tiny endocrine gland in the middle of our brain that’s shaped like a pine cone. It helps regulate our body’s circadian rhythm of sleep and wakefulness by secreting the hormone melatonin.
I notice how aware I am of light and dark this time of year. There’s an intensity to my noticing that light now comes earlier in the morning and lasts longer in the evening.
To augment my noticing, I light candles, keeping them going much of the time to massage my intake, my inhalation of smoke, flame and fragrance. I honor the passage and flickering motion and reach and touch of light.
Sausalito This Morning
We woke up with an impulse to greet the morning in Sausalito.
Emily Dickinson:
Wonder is not precisely knowing.
Our Teachers
Yesterday I walked along the fairy trail. It was raining an hour before, and then the sun came out though I was sheltered in an Oakwood Valley of ferns, trees, and streams. It felt magical and now I peruse the photos and see images in the water, trees, moss, and lichen to explore. When I returned home I saw the camellia bush offering buds and blooms.
In being with so much transition, I’m with these words of Robert Thurman:
When you understand interconnectedness, it makes you more afraid of hating, than of dying.
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