Nine: Returning to the Source
Too many steps have been taken
returning to the root and the source.
Better to have been blind and deaf
from the beginning!
Dwelling in one’s true abode,
unconcerned with and without –
The river flows tranquilly on
and the flowers are red.
A human life is filled with activity: folding laundry, cooking meals, buying groceries, making calls, catching up with the news, doing one’s job, servicing the car, playing sports, having coffee with a friend, watching a movie, weeding the garden, cleaning the kitchen floor, visiting one’s aunt, paying bills, spending time with family, raising kids, organizing social events, filing taxes, pursuing hobbies, dropping off mail, add your own.
All of it takes energy.
It does seem that the plentiful energy we possess is directed towards the glorious work of living a life. But what happens when energy is no longer available, when the energy generator goes off-line?
Do we revert to human beings?
In the absence of the energy to do, what is here?
As this practitioner discovered, there is a crisis of identity. “Who are you,” the voices ask, “if you cannot do?”
Pursuing that line of inquiry, since there isn’t energy to get up and do, one finds there is…
an awareness of life force…animating breath, beating a heart, circulating blood, signaling thirst, digesting food, regulating rest, spilling tears, generating thought
time to watch delicate wisps of clouds merge and dissolve against a blue sky
space to be fascinated by energy that isn’t the capacity to do work.
Taoist’s call this energy chi, the Hindus, prana.
In Sanskrit, “pra” means to fill, and “ana” is movement, together symbolizing the vital energy that fills and animates the universe.
We could say that prana is the energy of being.
A direct experience of this throb of aliveness is an encounter with “who I am,” for without this pulse of energy would “I” be?
Every spiritual practitioner is seeking an experience of the existential, taking many steps to find the secret encoded in one’s own heartbeat. Tuning raptly into the rise and fall of the breath, there is simply awareness of what is…
what moves the breath
what flows the river
what blooms the red flowers.
Isn’t that enough?
Gasshō
ashwini