A day will no doubt come when dust flies at the bottom of seas, and how can mountaintops avoid the transformation to gravel?
Young lovers may part, a man leaving, setting out on some boat, but who could say they'll never come together again one day?
*David Hinton. Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China.
* * *
Po Chü-i, poet and Chan Buddhist, lives with realization of impermanence. He looks out on the waters, forests, plants, and mountains and sees transiency everywhere. He looks at his face mirrored back from the waters and observes ephemerality. He witnesses everything is passing - is passing itself - a movement from the Fount of Nature, what he might call the Tao. This death, he knows, is not a cessation alone but a continuation, a transformation.
He sees forms keep forming, that forms are verbal, motion, and continuation. The illusion is form has solidity. To grasp reality, we think nouns and verbs. Eyes do not see: rather, seeing. You cannot divide eyes from seeing in the moment of seeing. We cannot locate a form not transforming, an ending not with continuing. Nature shows this to Po Chü-i and us.
The late Alan Watts, in his talk "Picture without a Frame," speaks of "frame-terms" (Mark Watts, Ed. Talking Zen: Reflections on Mind, Myth, and the Magic of Life). These are words - which are symbolic pointers strung together - we use to box in reality that cannot be boxed in, for reality is moving and more than what we point with. Again, we say "my eyes see," when only seeing is happening. "Seeing" certainly does not need "my." Watts also alludes to this process as the effort to catch wind in nets. Reality does not sit still to be put in boundaries. Everything is the frameless frame for a tree, a bird, and you. Intellectualization - the process by which we frame - is a relative step outside life, yet that too is in flux. We cannot locate intellectualization, for there are no walls and ceiling and floor for it to sit inside. Everything is moving together - a wholly communion. We cannot reach outside the matrix; we cannot step beyond ourselves - not as long as we are attached to reality as only relative, only stuff, even if sub-atomic particle stuff. This is why particle physics cannot step outside itself but is still glued to the stuff-realm.
The late Zen Buddhist Teacher, Dainin Katagiri, speaks of this living communion, this holy wholeness -
If your effort were not supported by the universe as a whole, you could not make any real effort at all. Pure, refined action makes no distinction between self and others. Trees, birds, and all other beings are completely harmonized in this sanctuary of the whole. This is our life.
*You Have to Say Something: Manifesting Zen Insight.
Note: Katagiri is speaking of the relative dimension. In the relative, we are one whole. In the absolute, we are the wholeness itself. Buddhists tend not to speak with specificity about the absolute dimension. Hence, the Buddha veered away from metaphysics and offered practical teachings much akin to psychology. So, many would not call Buddhism a religion.
* * *
Po Chü-i sees what we call past or death as open - open for it is moving-together-with: when you talk, the universe is talking, when silent, the universe is silent. When you smile, the universe smiles. Open means welcome - welcome because it welcomes. Ending and beginning one appearing. Where is ending? Where beginning? Nowhere, yet here. We live with this paradox. To contact what is outside or beyond it, relatively speaking, we live the paradox thoroughly, honestly; otherwise, we stay entrapped in the paradox that exists only on the surface, in the realm of stuff. We attach to pointers and miss the pointed to.
Materialism is snookered by surfaces, not recognizing the paradox that opens to the headwaters of appearances. Materialists live on a flat land, a depthless desert of surfaces-on-surfaces.
Po Chü-i's "who may say" is openness; he acknowledges we are part of an ever-changing, dynamic cosmology. We are not separate; we are the cosmology. Yet, openness means openness to impermanence and permanence. Fidelity in time-and-space to both frees us to embrace both the relative and absolute. We can live free of a bogged-down materialism or a false-flight transcendence. Matter and spirit inter-are, yet one rests on the other, matter unable to generate itself. As the Christian Scripture, in the Gospel of John, says, "The Word became flesh," not, "Flesh became the Word."
Note: The nonduality of "Word" and "flesh" does not mean they are not different. Nonduality is not monism. The absolute manifests itself as and in the relative; they are not the same, though not separate. A common error in spirituality seems this misunderstanding of the relationship between the ultimate and historical.
* * *
In the Jewish Scriptures (TaNaK), Abram sets out from Haran (located in modern Turkey), well east of a land he had never been to - called Canaan. Various tribal groups occupied this land to the west. He was to go so his people could become a blessing to others. The text reads: "The Lord had said to Abram, 'Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father's family, and go to the land that I will show you' (Genesis 12.1, NLT)." Abram loads up and leaves, and his leaving is entering a blessing-space.
Clinging to Haran would block the blessing-energies. We all have our Harans to leave to enter other space. Growth itself is a transforming of Harans. Our Harans live within the newness. Possibilities are silenced by not welcoming the welcoming. We make decisions in the relative to welcome the absolute to manifest. Nothing ever dies. Abram, by moving, never leaves Haran: in moving on, something goes with him. What is lives on in all that lives on. Not leaving anything behind is what Po Chü-i sees.
So, Abram is an archetypal figure. He images for us motion-within-impermanence. Yet, impermanence is permanence. Impermanence is a constant and grounded on other than its fleetingness. In the Genesis scripture, "Lord" connotes this other, or Other.
* * *
Life invites us to step into new, fresh spaces, blessing ones - sometimes inner, sometimes outer - not knowing what will arise, but with confidence. Confidence for we step from our connection with Life. We step into unknown, unexplored territory and let go of old patterns that have become stale and leave us feeling an intangible sense of lack, loss, and separation from the liveliness we once enjoyed. What awaits? Even if we refuse the welcome, we do not know. There is no way to know. We know only when we know.
* * *
Po Chü-i invites us to see a step into the unknown is positively creative. I was struggling over a move to another part of the state I live in. A moment decisive in deciding to move was an image. I kept seeing the image of a huge finger pointing downward and entering into the center of an open space, like a mandala. What arose in mind-heart was that by entering a new space, new possibilities would be created by the decision to act.
Another encouragement to move came from an acquaintance. He said he realized that hurting people would come to him wherever he went. I realized the same. A move was trusting that the calling from early in life would continue, and I would meet persons who needed a healing presence. I could accept Spirit would work through me to be a blessing to others.
* * *
To greet transitions, inner or outer, we honor the past. Sometimes, we grieve a sense of loss. Sometimes, we remain where we have been, sometimes not. Sometimes, we may get a clear, inner leading of what to do, sometimes not. Yet, opening can happen where we are or where we go. Life is opening, for life is the manifestation of potential, of welcome itself. Hence, Quakers speak of "way opening" or "the way will open" as instructive to a process of being patient until we receive inner guidance to act.
* * *
From where comes this life-changing? Po Chü-i sees from what does not change. Materialism says stuff changing is all there is, that impermanence is the final word on reality.
What does not change that witnesses change, however? What is beyond revision? Buddhists call this the ultimate dimension, among other things; other paths call it God, Tao, or something else. Our spiritual path provides a way to connect and get grounded in what does not change. Everything changes, but we find refuge and anchorage in a non-thing. We do not get seduced by impermanence with its thingness. We know, though not intellectually, something outside the duality of permanence-and-impermanence. We cannot say this, but we can know it.
* * *
Recently, watching the show Murder In (Season 9, Episode 1), a Creole tribe is holding the one-year anniversary of a death. The deceased's son is seen, after the tribal gathering, fighting with two other boys beside the ocean. He is resisting going into the water. The ritual bathing is to usher him into a new beginning free of the grief of the past. He is refusing. He wants to continue grieving his mother. He has identified his grief with his mother. Letting the grief go means letting the past go, letting his mom go. The grief has grounded him. Finally, he yields, receiving the welcome into newness, wades into the sea alone and begins pouring water over his body. He is taking a ritual bath. He now can walk out of the sea having been resurrected to a life unconfined by his memories of his mother and her demise. In grief was the opening to newness. He was able to do this, for he was supported by community. We need to give and receive the same support: to welcome life as ever-flowing, ever-renewing, ever-sacred.
