Meeting the Coming World
It seems perfectly logical to say we will all be confronted with a series of moments tightening the grip of death in which we will have to decide what we believe and what our conscious role shall be in attending and adapting to a process that is both in and out of our hands, that is entirely real and entirely illusory.
Being in an increasingly delicate and uncertain state for the past year for multiple reasons, it’s time to reassemble the elements of one’s known and unknown universe, the pieces scattered over a troubled and troubling landscape, to rediscover–or recover–one’s place in relationship to the ones close at hand and the ones far from view.
Reconciliation carries an implication of justice, a balancing of accounts. In this case it’s an honest discovery of others’ suffering while realizing our own mortality, complicity and limitations.
The appeal of post-activism–a walk into the desert beyond the last swimming pool, is an escape from human centrality, an intention to tend the wounds we have inflicted on our world, on ourselves, by presuming humans alone are the drivers of social change.
I’ve been in a rage since before the financial collapse of 2008. Well, actually, a good deal longer than that.
I could be pushing myself into ‘activism,’ reaching out to interact in a larger process or to articulate a view of what is important, communicating with others and formulating strategies, a timeline of objectives. But all of that is falling away.
The story of this body is written in an ever-refreshing pixilated environment, an ocean of shifting light, multitudes of biochemical gates constantly opening and closing. There is no permanent story.
This is the imperative of evolving spirituality, realizing Sufism’s unity of fanaa and baqaa & of Buddhism’s Two Truths, to be here and everywhere at all times, to simultaneously be emptiness and embodiment.
Bodhicitta is a way of connecting to other lives, of saying we are nothing without that connection and that our connection to each other is deeper than we can ever truly know.
Maybe I could see it if I had eyes on the side of my head instead of looking straight, as if I’m a fish, perpetually suspicious about the possibility of water—as if I once knew of it but have forgotten. That is, if I, a fish, believed in existence.
Spontaneous Presence 