Days that restore

This blog post reminds of such an important aspect of life that I want to reblog it on my site.

Mindfulbalance

Sabbath honors the necessary wisdom of dormancy. If certain plant species, for example, do not lie dormant for winter, they will not bear fruit in the spring. If this continues for more than a season, the plant begins to die. If dormancy continues to be prevented, the entire species will die. A period of rest – in which nutrition and fertility most reality coalesce – is not simply a human psychological convenience; it is a spiritual and biological necessity.

Wayne Muller,  Sabbath

photo werner100359

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Happiness And Wild Raspberries

This is the time of year when I become poetic.

It is midsummer, and I am staying again in a little red house that is almost one hundred years old. It always welcomes us so warmly when we arrive here after the winter – the old furniture with its stories, the light that lingers in quiet rooms, the squeaky steps that lead upstairs.

I leave behind me the dirt and restlessness of the city life when I come here. The ubiquitous green surrounds me. The wind rustles in the aspen leaves. The age-old, faithful apple tree is still blooming. And I enjoy walking barefoot on the grass.

Nothing much happens.

Photo: Maarit Suokas-Alanko

I sit on the doorstep and watch life flow by: a rabbit on its morning walk; the neighbor’s cat chasing a mouse; a young woman from a nearby farm riding a brown horse; a tiny grey lizard resting motionless on a warm rock in front of the sauna.

The days are a continuous stream of light with no clear beginning or end. Time slows down.

In the evenings I go to sleep satiated with life.

Perhaps by August I am ready to write another poem in the spirit of Zen, like I did last year:

Definition of happiness?
Don’t go further
than the nearest forest.
On a crispy
August morning
pick yourself those flawless
wild raspberries.

Put all you are into the smallest thing you do

To be great, be whole;
Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you.
Be whole in everything. Put all you are
Into the smallest thing you do.
So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendor
Because it blooms up above.

Fernando Pessoa

So Hard To Find The Words

Photo: Maarit Suokas-Alanko

I was in Sweden for a week, participating again in one module of my on-going training in Zen coaching.

Since coming back home it has been difficult to return to writing.

“Don’t touch me with your words, don’t reduce me to your concepts”, a voice inside me has been saying.

And yet, I have a need to say, an urge to share. So I’ll try to write. After all, I have in my use this limited, yet rich variety of symbols and metaphors, the words to convey my thoughts and feelings, ideas and experiences.

What is it then that is so hard to put into words?

… It’s all about life… it’s all about allowing myself to be vulnerable and showing my vulnerability.

… Looking back from where I am now – which is already one full life – I can see how there has been one big passion guiding me and my choices. I have wanted to dig deeper, to look beyond the apparent. I have yearned to see that I am part of something larger than just my small personal life. I have travelled all kinds of roads to explore my questions. Some of the roads I have walked have also turned out to be attempts to escape rather than find and face my personal truth.

There was theology. There was a ten-year odyssey exploring the world through journalism. Some twenty-year long journey of art and painting. Explorations of Buddhism and Raja yoga. An intense period of time devoted to working on my psychological wounds and scars.

And now there is something new dawning on me. A new connection, a fresh link between areas that I have considered separate until now.

I realize how deeply meaningful my journey has been! How wonderful has been the hidden intelligence that has been at play in everything.

Here are some of the insights that have been close to my heart during the past  weeks:

• I understand that religions are not the answer. They may be useful because they refer to something important, but they can’t replace your own inner authority that you have to find, in the end, in yourself, and in and through your own experience.
• I have also understood that you can’t use religion – or, for that matter, any spiritual or ideological approach – to escape the work that you have to do with your own psychological conditioning. You can’t skip the pain of exploring those hard shields, those clever masks under which you had to hide yourself as you grew up, to survive in the world you were thrown into when you were born.
• The wonderful human body! It is the place where I can look at my feelings and really FEEL everything. It is the body through which I am in contact with the world and with myself. It is only through the fragile body that I can experience the present moment. I can lie to myself, but the body doesn’t lie.
• Our definitions of ourselves are often too small, just as our definitions of “God” are too small. My inner level of Being – or, if you like, my Authentic Self, my Essence, my Supreme Self, my buddhanature – is a relevant, true dimension that is common to all human beings.
• The gate into a larger or deeper understanding of life is not outside myself – it is inside me. There is no external authority to say how I should explore that  field of experience. Therefore, I am free to use any means and walk any paths that I like, to get into contact with my inner Being. The important thing  to remember is this: You can’t get there without having to face your personal pain.
• To describe our inner level of Being we have to use metaphors and symbolic language. Therefore, mystics and poets touch these dimensions of our being better than official dogmas of organized religions, or scientific language of psychology.
• It is only through contact to our Being, to our Authentic Self, that we can be free, and we can accept our fate and life as it is, with compassion and love. We no longer need to defend ourselves, because there is nothing to defend; we see our “personality” with its emotions and feelings as waves or ripples on the surface of life; whether as our inner Being – that transcends our psychological history – is characterized by unshakable peace, love and joy.

*

I’ll finish with a poem that speaks about a mystic experience, described in words that refer to earthly love. The writer is Spanish St. John of the Cross (San Juan de la Crux) who lived in the 16th century.

On a dark night,
Anxious, by love inflamed,
– O joyous chance! –
I left not seen or discovered,
My house at last completely quiet.

In the darkness, with light,
By the secret ladder, disguised,
– O joyous chance! –
I left in the darkness, covered,
My house at last completely quiet.

On that joyous night,
In secret, seen by no one,
Nor with anything in sight,
I had no other light or mark,
Than the one burning in my heart.

This light guided me
More directly than the midday sun,
Where waiting for me
Was the One I knew so well, my delight,
In a place with no one in sight.

O night! O guide!
O night more loving than the dawn!
O night that joined
Lover with beloved,
Beloved in the lover transformed!

Upon my flowering breasts,
Which I had saved for him alone,
There he slept,
While I caressed his hair,
And the cedars’ breeze gave us air.

As I spread his tresses,
The fresh wind from the turret,
Wounds me in the neck as it presses
With its serene hand,
Suspending all my senses with its caresses.

I lose myself and remain,
With my face on the Beloved inclined;
All has come to rest,
I abandon all my cares
There, among the lilies, to die.

Truth Is A Pathless Land

“A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do it, it becomes dead, crystalized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others. This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do.”

This weekend I want to share with you a text that has had a deep impact on me. It is one of those texts that I read over and over again. It describes in a magnificent way what happens when we try to create an organization around a belief. The text is part of a talk given by Jiddu Krishnamurti in 1929. Krishnamurti was an Indian speaker and writer on philosophical and spiritual subjects. In his early life he was groomed to be the new World Teacher, but he later rejected this mantle and disbanded the organization. Here is part of the talk that he gave on that occasion.

“I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do it, it becomes dead, crystalized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others. This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down; rather, the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley. If you would attain to the mountaintop you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices. You must climb toward the Truth, it cannot be ‘stepped down’ or organized for you. Interest in ideas is mainly sustained by organizations, but organizations only awaken interest from without. Interest, which is not born out of love for Truth for its own sake, but aroused by an organization, is of no value. The organization becomes a framework into which its members can conveniently fit. They no longer strive after Truth or the mountaintop, but rather carve for themselves a convenient niche in which they put themselves, or let the organization place them, and consider that the organization will thereby lead them to Truth.”

The whole talk can be found here.

Krishnamurti talks about religious or spiritual organizations. I think, however, that the idea he presents can be used to understand some other phenomena, too. Let’s imagine a bit: Somewhere, someone has a fresh, original idea. To advocate and support that idea an organization is created. As time passes and the organization expands, the original, fresh idea gets diluted or withers away, and the sustenance of the organization becomes the main goal of the organization. Can you see any examples of this if you look around?

Krishnamurti’s biography, Krishnamurti 100 years by Evelyne Blau is probably the most fascinating life story that I have ever read. Another interesting book: Total Freedom; The Essential Krishnamurti, by J. Krishnamurti.