Dec., 31, 2006

It never ceases to amaze me how smart this little Pug is.

I know there are people who do not understand how someone could dote over their pets, but I don't really consider him as a 'pet'.

He's my little buddy!

Happy fourth birthday, Jesse!

peace, wayf

 

Long ago, there was a place I hiked frequently. It was a trail in a Texas State Park that wound along a creek bed and weaved in and out of Live and Red Oaks, Cedars, and Cotton Woods, up slight embankments and down steep ravines. At points, it crossed over the creek—sometimes there were makeshift bridges made from the trunks of fallen oaks and sand bags, where the water ran deep, and other places the trail just ran right through the creek itself. At one point, the trail ran down to the creek bed and turned sharply right along the course of the stream for a few feet before careening back and heading up a steep embankment, leaving the creek to go ‘round the hill and come back up to run alongside the trail again. Just as you thought you could go no further, you were faced with the tallest hill on the trail, straight up for at least ten or twelve feet. At the top of the hill, there was a small clearing cut out in a stand of tall Cedars with a little bench you could sit on and enjoy the view. Across from the bench, the hill sloped off gradually and was covered with white rocks and cacti. Further down the side of the hill, the Cedars were thick, and reached out in all directions, as Cedars do, with their eternally green appendages, while their heads attempted to touch the clear blue Texas sky. The trail continued on to the left, as you sat on the bench, and meandered its way down the hill, and out of sight…

 

I remember the very first time I hiked that trail. I saw a scraggly, brownish colored coyote dashing through the underbrush as my friends and I made our way along the creek bed and two gigantic wild turkeys crossed the trail directly in front of us at one point. It was November, and the air was brisk but not cold. Sitting on that hilltop surrounded on all sides by tall Cedars, it was easy to forget that you were just a stone’s throw from civilization. And the trail’s disappearing act down the hill was, on my first visit, a source of almost ecstatic joy. The excitement of not knowing what lay over that ridge (how much further ‘til the end? what’s at the end? does it ever end?) compelled me to keep going, though by that time my legs were like rubber bands and dusk was burgeoning.

 

There was an almost primal need to know.

 

There’s something to be said for not knowing, for not having the answers to every question, for “flying blind” in most situations. In the first place, it is the absence of knowledge that drives us to seek knowledge. One can not be learned without first being ignorant. It is only by admitting to ourselves that we are, in fact, ignorant that we can ever hope to gain new knowledge. One of my mentors in the Blues once told me “if you ever feel like you ain’t got no more learnin’ to do, you might as well put the guitar down and go find something else”. The true artist, the true student, the true seeker of wisdom never stops learning, never stops looking for that next spot on the trail where it disappears over the ridge line. If you ever feel like you have reached the end of the trail, that there are no more bluffs to climb, you might as well find another trail.

 

Up and over the ridge, the trail went down the side of the hill and immediately went back into a steep climb after crossing the stream for the last time as it disappeared into the Cedars and Oaks. Up and up, the trail wound up the next hill and leveled out at the top, Cedars to the left and a steep embankment to the right. Here, we could see that we were almost level with the tree line, and that the trail was, ever so slowly, still climbing. Up ahead, a hair pin curve that jutted out toward the embankment and slipped around a large outcropping of rocks to the left of the trail filled us with yet more eager anticipation as we wondered what was around that corner. As we made the turn, we could see that the trail made an “s” in front of us and led into a thick stand of Cedars. On the other side of that stand of trees, we hit pay dirt.

 

Standing atop a sheer cliff that stood well above the trees, and looking out over a crystalline lake to our right, a spillway in front of us, and a frisky, bubbling creek that ran off into the woods to our left. For a brief moment, we were at peace with the trail, for it had indeed ended with a sight worth seeing. Above our heads, Red-Tailed Hawks and buzzards performed aerial ballets of sheer grace and beauty. Over the trees, out to the east, thick, white clouds of smoke rose up where the rock quarry was, and the ribbon of the old two-lane highway was just barely visible. On the lake, a group of ducks were floating languidly, occasionally going tails up into the water and coming back up. The cool air hitting the water made a thin, white filament of fog that seemed from that vantage point to separate us from the ground, and gave the impression of walking in clouds. A quick look to the left revealed, however, that we had not found the trail’s end after all, for it meandered its way down the rocky slope and trailed off into the distance side by side with the stream.

 

“I wonder what that leads to…” I mused out loud.

 

Knowledge is important. With knowledge of how the world works, we acquire the means needed to survive. Every turn we come to, every ridge that stands before us, offers the opportunity to us to learn more survival skills. Sometimes, though, we display a tendency to raise ourselves a bit too high after acquiring only a small bit of knowledge. “Ignorant” has become a pejorative term in our society. We look at ignorance as being stupid, dumb, or lazy. The people I am concerned for, however, are not those who can freely admit ignorance, but those who refuse to accept their ignorance, for they are the truly dangerous ones. Ignorance is not laziness, but, just as Webster’s defines it, “a lack of knowledge or experience.” If we look at that definition in the broadest sense possible, doesn’t it lead us to the realization that all of us are ignorant to some degree?

 

We all looked at the trail as it descended down the hill and ran off through the woods hand in hand with the gleefully dancing creek. For a brief moment, we all silently contemplated following the trail to its next destination. The coming of night changed our minds though, and we turned with flashlights in hand and made our way back the way we came. Walking over those same hills and bluffs, crossing the creek in the same places we had just been hours before, trekking slowly back to our campsite, I noticed how everything looked slightly different. The very things I had looked at on the way to the overlook had a new appearance to me. The different lighting, the new angle—those were definitely factors—but, there was also something inexplicable about the difference. In all the years that have passed since, I can still look back on that day and recall that sense of wonder I felt. There was still a ridge to climb, still something that lay beyond my field of knowledge on that trail, and one day I would be able to come back there and look at it all with new eyes.

 

There is definitely something to be said for not knowing.

It was one of those days.

 

You know the kind—a sky so blue it almost hurts to look at, just a few cirrus clouds like tattered strands of white tissue paper floating languidly through the firmament, and a cool, crisp breeze that soothes the skin as it whispers passed.

 

Yeah, one of those days.

 

I stood, small in comparison, gazing at the perfection of the imperfectly random cloud formations as they meandered listlessly through the azure heavens, and wondered—perhaps wandered—at the marvel that was earth. Pensive and unsure, like an ant must feel as it gazes upon our skyscrapers and roadways—but strangely I was calm; as if I had come home.

 

‘Coming home’: what images that phrase conjures in our minds! Warm hearths, warmer hugs—seeing those we are close to and assuring ourselves that all is well ‘at home’.

 

As I stared upward the clear sky looked like a lake turned in on itself. I felt invited, as if the whole of the earth had reached its loving arms around me in a fond embrace, whispering ‘welcome home’ on the soothing breeze.

 

Back in the apartment, seated in front of a computer screen writing a description of a blue sky and feeling the futility of attempting such a description in my gut.

 

Behind me and to my left, the television chatters away, heard but not listened to.

 

An oscillating fan whirs silently back and forth, bringing with it welcome blasts of moving air as it turns my way; fleeting, but comfortable.

 

At my feet a softly snoring Pug and another hidden across the room. The sounds of their breath rising and falling, coupled with the breath of my napping wife, sometimes in unison but more often in complete discord, calls to mind the randomly perfect wisps of clouds as they floated along on the unseen breath of the Universe.

 

The profundity of the mundane—the complexity of silence—comes crashing in around me in welcome blasts of moving air from a softly whirring dollar store fan and the sound of three beautiful beings as they sleep.

 

I feel invited.

 

I hear the whispers on their breath saying ‘welcome home’.

 

peace, wayf

 

P/S:

 

Here's hoping that all of you found your way safely home this Holiday Season, from Mrs. w, myself, & the Pugs.

 

P/P/S:

 

To all of my Christian friends, a Very Merry Christmas.

 

To all of those who are not Christian, Happy Holidays.

 

And a heartfelt thank you to all who dropped Holiday Greetings in my inbox.

 

I've been very busy for the last couple of weeks, but I am back now!

 

“He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity, and capacity to love, will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas.  There is nothing more tragic in the modern world than the misuse of power and action to which men are driven by their own Faustian misunderstandings and misapprehensions. We have more power at our disposal today than we have ever had, and yet we are more alienated and estranged from the inner ground of meaning and of love than we have ever been.”

 

-Thomas Merton

 

peace, wayf

I have been studying the ideas and philosophy of Taoism off and on for the last eighteen years of my life. I am nowhere near a state of enlightenment or awakening yet. I have found that I am just now at the beginning stages of the journey, actually. During the last eighteen years, I have flirted with awakenings (and, indeed have experienced “little awakenings” along the way), but in all actuality, I have merely been preparing my mind for the steps that must be taken along the path. The drinking episodes, the stints as a musician, and the experimentation with writing have all been beneficial growing and learning experiences to help me “get my mind right” for the journey.

 

I realize now that the heavy drinking was, in its own way, a cry to the Universe for help. It was, albeit unconsciously, an attempt to function in the outside world while shutting off the noise of the inside world—to numb the pain of the ugly truths I was confronted with as I delved into my sub-conscious mind. I realized that I was motivated by a sense of being “alone” and without a purpose. I felt weak and insubstantial, because, try as I might I couldn’t “know God” as all of my peers claimed they did. I felt a sense of hopelessness in the knowledge that we live and die, and nothing would ever change that. And I was angry that I couldn’t find someone who could answer the questions adequately. In short, I believe the drinking was, now that I look back on it, a buffer of sorts against the ugliness of my own psyche that I was uncovering. Rather than confronting my demons, I was creating more. There are things in our consciousnesses that we do not want to face; ugly and nasty ways of thinking, guilt about passed transgressions against others, and guilt about our own presumed inadequacies. Admittedly, there are things in my psyche that I have not yet dealt with fully, but I believe now that is because I have not been emotionally mature enough to deal with them properly.

 

There is a passage in the Tao Te Ching that says: “When a wise student hears of the Tao; he accepts it and practices it diligently. When an average student hears of the Tao; he gives it thought now and then. When the foolish student hears of the Tao; he laughs out loud. If there were no laughter, it would not be Tao.” I have, for the last eighteen years, been the “average” student in this scenario. I have met many “foolish” students along the way, but have not yet met a “wise” one face to face. The thing is, from the very first time I read the Tao Te Ching I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that there was something to what it said. There was truth in those words that transcended the “surface” meaning of the sentences they formed. And that is what kept me coming back again and again. Ultimately, it was the very words written in a book and translated many times over that broke the chains that I had shackled myself with for so many years. The last time I came back to that book (a little over a year and a half ago) I quit drinking for good. No “slacking off” the drink, no gradually slowing down. I just quit.

 

See, something profound occurred directly before I took my last drink. I had what one might call an “epiphany”. I realized that, contrary to what I had led myself to believe for so long, there is a purpose to all of this—one may say it is a “divine purpose”. I am a vehicle for the divine consciousness, and so are you. Tao moves through us, whether we know it or not. Our purpose is to be as receptive to that Universal Source as we can and to allow its potentiality, or Te, to flow through us. We are the consciousness of Tao manifested in the world. It is not like us, in any way. It has no concerns, worries, hopes, or dreams; it simply moves, and due to that movement, the whole of the Universe moves in harmony and unison. We do indeed have free will—the freedom to choose whether or not we make ourselves open and receptive to the harmony of the Universe or not. However, to attempt to move against Tao is futile, for it is the movement of the entire Universe. Most people will never accept that responsibility fully: “When the average student hears of the Tao; he gives it thought now and then.” Some of us accept the challenge with courage wholeheartedly and diligently put to practice their own particular ways of being the receptive vessel of Te they were meant to be; showering the world with the kind of deep, unconditional love only Te is capable of producing.

 

The thing about it is, in order for anyone to live a truly and deeply spiritual life, it is necessary to check motives. If one enters the stream in an effort to find inner peace, or salvation, in a purely self motivated way, it will most likely result in tragedy. This is why I have such a problem with the so-called “self-help” movement and its “gurus”. The message implicit in all of the self help seminars and books is that of a self centered aggrandizement. It seems that most of them are centered on impressing upon the listener how important it is to be “powerful”, or “influential”; how to “win”. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with having an influence, we must always be mindful of our motives for wanting to be influential. Is it just for “me”? If it is, it is useless. The first and most important realization that one has to have is that whatever he or she does will only be beneficial to them personally if it is of some benefit to the people they come into contact with. No amount of wealth acquired, no amount of promotions in your job, and no amount of platitudes recited as “affirmation” that YOU are special, that YOU are unique, so on and so on, will ever take the place of the real feeling of connectedness and unity that is felt in service to others. While the self help gurus tell you to focus on YOU, YOU, YOU; the Tao is silently saying “US, US, US!” The truly spiritual feeling comes from being a voice for the voiceless, the strength of those who are weakened; from being a vehicle for all that is right, and good, and pure in the Universe. It is standing on the solid Earth and realizing that all of creation is you, and you are the whole of creation.

 

No borders. No distinctions.

 

Black Elk once said: “All things are our relatives. What we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really one.” So, if we abuse the world and its inhabitants, we abuse ourselves. If we do things to our own being that are harmful and injurious, we are injuring every other thing. If we live our lives in a way that is helpful to others we are serving our purpose. This is not about the arbitrary “rights” and “wrongs” of the world. This is about truth--and love for all living things. There is, you see, an underlying truth that has run through every religion and philosophy that I can think of: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

 

The Zen Buddhist author and teacher Steve Hagen proposed the more “negative” recitation: “Do NOT do unto others as you would NOT have them do unto you.”

 

Peace Pilgrim, the fascinating woman who spent twenty some-odd years of her life walking around the country talking to people about peace, translated it like this: “If you want to have friends, be friendly.”

 

No matter how you say it, it comes down to this truth; if you live your life in a self-serving manner, in the end you will have served only yourself. If you live to be of service to others, you will have left your mark on the world through those who you helped, thus you have in some small way made the world a better place. One of the greatest moments of the aforementioned epiphany came in the strangest of forms—a commercial for Ford trucks or some such with a famous basketball star came on the television. During the commercial, the basketball player is depicted doing various good deeds in his home town. As the commercial closes, the basketball star says, “I just want to leave the world a better place than I found it.”  

 

And so do I.

 

peace, wayf

 

(to be continued... :) )