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A Road Somewhere In Winter
By early spring I had finally admitted to myself that I no longer felt the call to solitude on my forested mountain. I still went frequently to sit and walk in the place of fields and meadows, and often on a weekend I spent the better part of a day in my canoe, but these were no longer seeking-searching-yearning times; they were simply times of seeing-feeling-experiencing what was there. There was much expectancy in me, but no expectations.
*Gerald G May, MD. The Wisdom of Wilderness.
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A shift transpired at my workplace, or, rather, within me. I made a mistake and was surprised at how well I handled the aftermath. The inner calm was baffling. Then, a sudden, deep-felt relaxation arose. A letting go happened without effort. I felt lighter. What came to mind and heart on the walk out the building and toward my truck was a freeing confession - "I do not belong here." For the first time, I could see I did not belong in such a "dark" place.
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When you realize you do not belong somewhere, that is first not about the somewhere, it is about you. Often, it is about what you have become. Be grateful when you no longer belong somewhere you did or could have belonged before. What a blessing is this non-belonging! For it means that place can no longer contain you - if it ever could. You have grown away from it.
So, realizing you do not belong where you are is the invitation to be where you do belong. Often, this new "place" of belonging entails not a change outside yourself, but the move to a new "place" within yourself.
Moving from a place outside or inside yourself is welcoming how life flows incessantly. You cannot find anywhere to anchor. You may see change as an interlude from the norm, as though it is the exception, but this is a misunderstanding. Change itself is the norm.
And there is no one place to locate life or yourself as finally belonging, for life is what we call change, and you are that life. Peace arises in our "Yes" to life-happening. In this "Yes," we adjust better to the inevitable moments when change appears more apparent and, at times, disconcerting to us. We stop trying to anchor in what itself is changing - and everything is changing.
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David Chadwick, a disciple of Shunryu Suzuki and author of his teacher's biography, Crooked Cucumber, shares of this fact of change -
One night in February of 1968, I sat among fifty black-robed fellow students, mostly young Americans, at Zen Mountain Center, Tassajara Springs, ten miles inland from Big Sur, California, deep in the mountain wilderness. The kerosene lamplight illuminated our breath in the winter air of the unheated room.
Before us the founder of the first Zen Buddhist monastery in the Western Hemisphere, Shunryu Suzuki-roshi, had concluded a lecture from his seat on the altar platform. “Thank you very much,” he said softly, with a genuine feeling of gratitude. He took a sip of water, cleared his throat, and looked around at his students. “Is there some question?” he asked, just loud enough to be heard above the sound of the creek gushing by in the darkness outside.
I bowed, hands together, and caught his eye.
“Hai?” he said, meaning yes.
“Suzuki-roshi, I’ve been listening to your lectures for years,” I said, “and I really love them, and they’re very inspiring, and I know that what you’re talking about is actually very clear and simple. But I must admit I just don’t understand. I love it, but I feel like I could listen to you for a thousand years and still not get it. Could you just please put it in a nutshell? Can you reduce Buddhism to one phrase?”
Everyone laughed. He laughed. What a ludicrous question. I don’t think any of us expected him to answer it. He was not a man you could pin down, and he didn’t like to give his students something definite to cling to. He had often said not to have “some idea” of what Buddhism was.
But Suzuki did answer. He looked at me and said, “Everything changes.” Then he asked for another question.
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Realizing you have changed and so you do not belong where you belonged - job, relationship, a religion, inner spiritually - is simply the way life keeps moving. And, as with me, if we allow, where we no longer belong will simply drop. And stepping from one place means stepping into another place. Hence, change is the norm, and life invites us to join with it in this ongoing adventure.
And as to time, we do not have to worry about where the next place will be. If we naturally move, we are already by that movement transitioning into another place. The new to which you belong is already present before leaving the old; otherwise, the realization of not-belonging would not have arisen.
This is all possible for the belonging is already present in the not-belonging. We cannot mark an ending to belonging and a new start to belonging. We cannot, in such a manner, partition life into pieces. When you see not-belonging, you see belonging. Otherwise, you could not see either. The two are friends; not-belonging and belonging are simply kin expressions of the Way. So, in welcoming not-belonging, you welcome belonging. Yet, if you deny not-belonging, you deny belonging.
Consequently, living in the sense of adventure is living with expectancy. We do not need to know specifics about what to expect; however, we expect. In the words of May, above, "There was much expectancy in me, but no expectations." We expect in a manner that keeps us grounded in the nodal point we call now. When we get pulled away from now, often by uncertainty about what is to come, we return to now. If we can speak of having anywhere to anchor, it is only now. The expectation can be read as assurance that all will turn out well, we do not know how, and we settle into a welcoming inner-posture for the not-yet-to-appear to appear in its time of fruition. In this, we practice fidelity to the only moment we can be true to - this one.
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2020
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse. The book is a collection of poems based on mystical traditions, especially Christian and Sufi, with extensive notes on the teachings and imagery in the poetry.
*To contact Brian, write to LotusoftheHeart@gmx.com .
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