Lin Jensen, a Zen Buddhist teacher, tells of meeting his ex-wife years after she initiated the divorce after twenty-four years of marriage.
One day when we chanced to meet, she greeted me with an unguarded smile that said she was glad to see me again. We stood on the sidewalk talking as casually as simple acquaintances might, and I was struck with the wonder of how unforeseeable the consequences of our choices can be. What one fears seldom materializes. Here was Shirley laughing and chattering as if nothing would ever be withheld from her again. It was a bright autumn day for both of us that morning where we met with white clouds streaking over Monterey Bay and the cry of gulls on the wind.
*Lin Jensen. A Memoir of Love, Beauty, and Redemption in Dark Places.
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We are being divorced all the time; something or someone is leaving. What we are walking away from is walking away from us. Gain and loss are equally part of life, one, not two, sides of a single reality.
Buddhists refer to this coming and going as "impermanence" (annica). Annica is one of the Three Marks of Existence; the other two, also in Pali, being non-self (anattā) and dukkah (suffering). Everything changes, being made up of transmuting elements. Everything is becoming something else.
The change is subtle; we misperceive, failing to see the change. This misperception leads to suffering arising from clinging. When clinging does not work, aggression arises, grasping at what was. We try to put life in neutral. We get more frustrated by this futile attempt. We have no self, too, because the self we think we are is part of this change. The relative self is a constellation of evanescent ingredients. Hence, impermanence connotes death, which, at the same time, speaks of a birth. On one side, impermanence sounds like bad news, but on the other, it connotes good news.
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Loss can be a hopeful place, a loving place when we allow it. Even loss in someone deciding to leave us can be a gain. Being released from a job can be a hopeful place. Losing someone to death, too, is a promising place if we see it and accept it. If we do not accept these things, we suffer.
A co-worker of my late father had a dream. He had dreamed of his past mother many times. In this last dream, she told him it was time for him to let her go. He did. In that, he was practicing acceptance, freeing himself from the past, and freeing her. See, freedom is inextricably linked with impermanence and, so, loss.
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where's the line between arrival and departure? i'll love you always and goodbye forever? look closely you see nowhere
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Meditation can help in training us to observe receiving and losing, comings and goings, and how to relax with it without grasping and hopelessness.
I, sitting before the altar, an opening deeper, spaciousness clear, then closing. Sitting with that, as flow, and in the absence of the sense of that opening that closed, staying open, not shutting down. Opening and closing have many degrees, as do loss and gain.
meditation what? sit don't shut down open open open feel the growing openness nothing there but spaciousness alive, source of life
that simple so, we live this way open open open feel the growing openness nothing there but spaciousness alive, source of life
open that simple even open to the sense of loss of openness that's openness, too
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In 2018, I walked away from a good job and excellent pay. I did not have any other employment. I left knowing something else awaited or the inner guidance to leave would not have been given. I left peaceful, knowing a death is a coming of another new birth. I have lived long enough to have seen this so many times; this knowing is as natural as breathing, even if sometimes I forget it.
life what? receive and let go, receive and let go, receive and let go inhale and exhale and gap before inhale that's it! life is breathing not breathing means death so breathe be the space to be blessed with welcome to bless goodbye keep breathing that simple, even if sometimes painful
I walked away to my truck in the parking lot to leave the site for a last time; no regret, no sense of loss, though loss present, stepping from a once hopeful place into a new promising place ~ breathing.... in and out... in and out ... with that gap between.
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Says Pema Chodron, in When Things Fall Apart, of her first teaching in bodhicitta: Tibetan, "tender, friendly, warm heart."
When I was about six years old... an old woman sitting in the sun. I was walking by her house one day feeling lonely, unloved, and mad, kicking anything I could find. Laughing, she said to me, "Little girl, don't go letting life harden your heart."
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In accepting loss as a hopeful place, not letting it harden us in defensiveness against loss, we can extend compassion to animals, insects, plants, lakes, and other creatures. All creatures are losing something. So many persons are hurting inside, usually silently, not daring to speak the pain. We can be a refuge. We can be with them, not trying to fix them, knowing we cannot, we need not. They can possibly feel some hint or more of encouragement through being near us, and our open heart can be felt as a nonjudgmental invitation to open their hearts, trust life again, and love again. After all, there is only one heart, our heart. And hope is, like despair, contagious.
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For me, this learning to keep my heart open and trust again was aided by a lover I had placed much faith in leaving me about fifteen years ago.
i came home almost all was gone empty house empty dreams years ago i'm still learning again to love you in a different way i'm still learning to let you go, even though you're gone, you left to be grateful that, for a time, you loved me like you did i'm still learning how to be so grateful you did walk away how to be so grateful to be free of your anger how to see that you were so hurt, me you could not help but hurt i came home almost all was gone empty house, a new beginning hurt but not forever, neither for you nor me a new beginning, whatever the reasons, for each and, at least for me, a more tender, loving heart so, thank you yes, and peace sincerely, the one who returned to the empty house sincerely, bitter no more sincerely, again, thank you
We keep learning how to love, how to forgive, and how to live in the present tense. We cannot live life in freedom while refusing to leave the grave sites of the past. Loss is not bad news. Loss is one way life shares itself. In saying "Yes" to endings, we say "Yes" to new beginnings.
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2024. Permission is given to use photographs and writings with credit given to the copyright owner.
*Brian's book is An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love. The book is a collection of poems Brian wrote based on wisdom traditions, predominantly Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi, with extensive notes on the poetry's teachings and imagery.
