Rock Garden Tao

you know that i speak, at times, of my rock garden nestled below the arching bamboo culms in the back.  

i am there most days for an hour or more.  

often digging out hidden boulders, looking for new ones under the fragrant earth, exploring them, rubbing them, cleaning them, revealing their shapes. 

handful by handful moving soil, revealing a dense hardness to the earth that was hidden from view.

breaking my nails and covering myself in mud while cleansing my inner self in the process.

then, doing man's deeds: planting succulents, ferns and grasses of life.  

forming beauty from our own darkened imagination.

you know those ancient taoists (that lao tzu certainly held his asian ear to the earth!) believed these bulging stones were the spine of the world.  its backbone.  its strength and stability.  its firmness.  

its philosophical anchor.

but those wu-wei souls lived a long time ago --  in a world more attuned to nature's unspoken voice, a distant calm and the presence of immortals in the backyard.

yet living here, below shivapuri danda, with these mottled weighty stones bunched in unmovable clusters, it's easy to believe that there is an eternal life within these boulders.  

eternity, thy name is stone!  magma.  sediment.  igneous.  lava.  pumice. minerals.

hard and unyielding. blind to our passions and yearnings.  noble and forthright.  still and constant.  

unspeaking, yet they whisper softly in the crepuscular light.  they hum, actually, echoing the cricket's song and the cry of the split-tailed drongos as they dance in the purple light above the walnut tree.

they have seen much, even as they were buried by soil for generations.  

as my hands spill more soil in soft piles, i'm sure, below the boulders, i'll find a 1,000 year old lichhivi temple.  its brick shikar tower once trapped by a himalayan landslide waiting patiently for a jewish explorer to unearth her noble form. 

such is my current vocation: dirt digging.  a thoroughly modern musahar of the valley.

around me, as my neighbors concrete homes go up, i'm digging down.  

i've done the up thing in life.  it's ok.  actually quite good for many aspects of the world -- but not the soul.

classic sacred western theology has gotten it wrong for long -- as souls don't go up or down. 

that's another human frame.   heaven above.  hell below.  the law of moses and manu.  g-d above.  brahmins from the head.  dalits from the feet.  sacred mountains.  top of the hill.  bottom of the pile.  flying high.  sinking low.  

all that...

but my experience tells me the soul needs earth, privacy, silence, moisture.  

not those arid realms of power, damask, dignity, gold leaf and hierarchy.  

these nameless boulders don't rise and fall.  they simply lie where they land.  maybe tumble a bit.  roll around.  

they're not afraid to merely flop.  

they are big for awhile, then things begin to fall apart.  they break, crease, splinter and separate.  

again, the nature of things...  so common to all living things.  

"anicca.  anicca.  anicca.", goenka said, i recall. 

but for these wizened boulders without any bitterness, worry or anxiety.  

it is, simply.  or was.  

new forms evolve.  new shapes.  a fresh crack or crevice or the like.  somewhere for a young root to take refuge.  and grow.  soil seeps in.  water, too.  earth happens.  

but, the boulder sublimely meditates on it all.  

silently.  

unperturbed or disturbed.  quiet unto itself.  

not as striving as we who observe, much less the nearby trees.  not striving at all, actually.  not in the growth realms of the living.  

no ages.  no birthdays.  no degrees.  no anniversaries.  no rings.  no new leaves.  nada. 

nope! 

more in the meditative, monastic pattern of letting life be.  or not be.   as the case may be...

that mystical, mercurial taoist 'doing-not-doing', again.  

being.  (or not being...)

clever material things!  (or not so clever material things!)

no problem, actually.  simplicity magnified.  or reduced.  or under-elevated, i guess.  in its own dull, grey rockish way.   beaten by the elements, wind, water, erosion.  

let it come!  

takes it all on and never, not once, complains.  

open to new patterns, new styles, new events.  changelessly changing.  imperturbable.  accepting.

takes it all in.   

there's much to learn from these hard to understand beasts of the earth.  they observe all.  they support all.  they are meek signals of a distant explosive past beyond our remotest perception.  

a reminder, i suppose, of the fearless truths of our dusty, silent, deepest universe.  

the actuality of existence.  no poetry no prose.  no swaddling clothes or marriage gowns.  not even the mortal shroud before the tomb.  

just the stone-in-itself, as kant may have noted in his high idealistic bambuddhist deutsch.  

no sentiments. no tears. just the fine colors and patterns of existence.  

a line of quartz or igneous stratification.  a rough edge or sharp line.  

though as often the soft rounded, maternal curve that excites us so.  smoothed by the centuries or mere millennium.  

geological time.  

not our fleeting days and decades that so dazzle and stimulate our eager modern minds.  

these are the still, wise souls of nature 

within whom, 

when i reflect, 

i can find my real home.

amid the dirt 

under 

my

fingernails.

Butterfly Heaven

 “Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Chou. Soon I awakened, and there I was myself again. Now I do not know whether I was a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things.”

After Dad died, some of his doctors came into the hospice room to offer their condolences. They spoke of his respiratory failure and the anatomical finale of his existence among us on this lovely yet troubled world.

Although intrigued by the medical arts and sciences I'd never studied, I was still confused by where Dad had gone. While his now silent body lay in front of us, still, quiet, in deep repose, his spirit, the flicker of a smile on his lips, the light in his green eyes, the anxious frown on his forehead, were gone.

I knew that Death had come and taken my father away. I couldn't deny that.

No longer would he either encourage or exasperate me, as he'd done, no doubt, always for my benefit, throughout my life. No longer would I hear his voice on the phone, receive his reminders of things I need to do or hug his increasingly frail body when I reached Palm Beach Gardens or he came to visit me somewhere on my family's perpetual perigrinations in this world.

So, I wondered, naturally it seemed to me, where Dad had gone.

After all, it seems unlikely, irrational, childish even, to imagine that such a powerful energy or spirit or soul or life force could simply vanish like the light of a candle.

Could it?

So I asked his hospice doctor, "If you don't mind, where is my father now?"

She replied without words, only a finger pointing up, at the ceiling, although I think she meant the skies or heaven or the empryean or beyond. "There!", she seemed to be saying, beyond words, beyond description, beyond her medical school education or her years of medical practice had taught her. (I'm not sure that they have a class in medical school on this subject...)

So, when Dad's gentle and kindly Indian internist came by to offer his condolences, I asked him the same question. "Dr. H., where is my father?"

Dr. H. looked at me sceptically and slightly confused, so I quickly added, "I asked Dr. B. the same question."

"What did she say?", he asked.

"I'd rather hear your answer first.", I replied.

"Well, in the Hindu world, we believe that the soul migrates from life to life. In this way, the soul moves from one life to another until it reaches perfection and is released from the constant turning, the wheel of existence. However, it is rare to reach that stage so most people's souls continue to step from bodily form to bodily form constantly trying to improve or purify its essence."

[At least that's what I understood Dr. H. to be saying...]

"Yes", I said, "that is traditional Hindoo orthodoxy, but what do YOU believe?"

"Well, I believe the same, actually. The soul doesn't die in the same sense as the body. As the physicists have taught us, nothing that is created or exists within the material world can ever not exist in the world. It can change form, but it can't simply not exist anymore. That's impossible. Therefore, our soul must still be here, somewhere, moving toward light and liberation."

[Moksha, I believe, is what the traditional Vedantists call it.]

"Can our human souls reincarnate as non-human life?", I asked, as I know that this has been a spiritual and philosophical question for millennia -- although, for me, only in the decades since I began to gaze confusedly up at the stars...

"No", Dr. H. said. "I don't believe a human soul can migrate to a non-human form. That's quite unlikely."

Well, the point of this story isn't to hope that Dr. B. or Dr. H. can answer questions that have weighed on human consciousness since man first discovered fire and sat around it at night wondering about our relationship to the stars. Even non-verbal societies, if such existed early on, tens & tens of thousands of years ago, must have been tempted by the same thoughts. Definitely the Vedic poets, the Greek epic storytellers and Hebrew psalmistists explored such inchoate ideas more than a few thousand years ago.

Nor, do I have an easy answer to the very simple question of 'where is my father' or, my dearly beloved deceased friend and guide, Jerry Sternin (as we attended a lovely life embracing ceremony for him today in Cambridge).

I simply know that neither of these remarkable and beloved men are here any more. Everyone seems to agree on that. Death, that harvester of the living, has come and taken them away, leaving only the emblems and body of their lives for us to muse upon while we remain.

So, it was with a bit astonishment, after we took our lovely 8 year old daughter, Leah Prajna Rose, to a butterfly farm in South Deerfield, MA this morning as she so urgently, in her perpetual childlike wonder, desired, while I wandered amidst this enclosed tropical environment, with thousands of the most beautiful butterflies floating around us of such beguiling colors, patterns and forms, that I, belatedly realized both Dr. B. and Dr. H. may have been wrong.

For I think I recognized my father, a handsome, cream and black Monarch buttefly resting on a sugar cup, while, over there, too, behind a mauve bouginvillea, flittering and floating among the sweet flowers, Jerry. They appeared a bit dazed by their new incarnations, which could explain their inability to fly or, possibly, dance in a straight line.

I guess they were simply getting their beginner's butterfly wings. A bit new to the overall butterfly program.

No doubt, a bit astonished to have taken such a pristine and gentle living form.

At that moment of revelation, I realized: how perfect! What a delightful and enchanting place for a weary human soul to rest for the length of a butterfly's lifetime, in between the arduous transition from one human soul to another.

Or, if they had really perfected their human forms, maybe my father and Jerry rest for eternity, or at least as long as that lasts, in the final chrysalis of a gorgeous, nearly transparent, fragrantly innocent floating butterfly.

There, at peace, in their own refined, modest heaven among us on earth.

I know that Leah thinks it could be true...

Why not us?