To study the self is to forget the self: I'm Not There, the very best in navel-gazing!
And so Spring begins: a gorgeous, sunny break from chilly rain; a sneaky yellowjacket climbing the computer!
I was also inspired today by a comment made on my last post by a new friend:
I think this practice of photographing the familiar is a good way to mirror meditation...we think we know what is happening in our mind...but then we sit and really observe and it is not always what we expected.
I like what she says so much. I also find this same "unexpected" quality is true for how we perceive people. Or ourselves even; we're changing all the time. But for me, the unexpected is easiest to note while watching my child grow.
Just today I had one of those moments. Back home from the playground, I watched my 3-year-old crack open a book and get lost in the illustration on one particular page. "He always studies his books" is what his father and I say of him quite often. "He gets lost in them. He could sit and stare at a page for 20 minutes uninterrupted, no kidding."
Always. That is how our son
is-- part of what defines him as
him, and it's how we
know him. But even as I was thinking it, today for the first time I realized he hadn't done so much as crack open a book in I-don't-know-how long.
So, there is my son, and there is my idea of my son. And there is my new neighborhood, and my idea of my neighborhood. And there is me...
I watched a wave once, and had it captured on film. Or rather, something like a wave. In Chaos Theory, it's known as a "standing wave".
And when you take the time to watch a wave? You realize you can't find a
wave anywhere.
Likely I am thinking about standing waves even more than usual because I'm on the doorstep of 40, and more than ready to ring that bell. In just 17 more days, in fact. Who am I now? What have I done with my life? With tools like Blogger and Facebook I've gotta admit, it's easy to see the rich tapestry I've woven throughout my life so far... Am I the same? Different?
Every loving minute, I am...
This is one of Buddhism's brightest topics: that everything changes; that form is emptiness, emptiness is form. But in this study of what is and what isn't, I think it's easy to get tripped up by the notion then that "nothing really exists". Rather, I find it helpful think of reality in terms of Everything is a conversation, in constant relationship.
Carrying the self forward to confirm the myriad dharmas is delusion. The myriad dharmas advancing and confirming the self is realization. --Dogen
Our lives are led through our senses, and our mind makes depictions based on these, and creates understandings. In this way, life as we know it to be is a part of the depth of that conversation, of that relationship. It's not that it doesn't exist or not-- I mean, even I lean pretty heavily on the reality of my morning coffee, and my afternoon saving-grace cup-of-tea. Rather it's that our perception is not the final word, nor is it the only perspective.
And so to remind us to challenge our perspective as often as we can, we have the poetry of this kind of exercise, of listening in intently to this conversation of change-- be it out the back door, or in the living room with our baby...toddler...child..., or maybe even while listening to
Bob Dylan talk about himself:
You always have to realize that you're constantly in a state of becoming. As long as you can stay in that realm, you'll sort of be all right.
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