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adventure
May 2008 
walking the path
Posted on Feb 8th, 2007
by 
evelyn
evelyn
Access: Public
I worry, sometimes, that I am not foolish enough, and that I try too hard to know, or commit too fully to certain beliefs, or struggle too much to understand, or, worst of all, that by happily embracing a not-knowing and relishing uncertainty and paradox, I've merely bound myself within yet another system of thought.
And somehow, in that, there's the deliciously sad understanding that being so bound (by any system!) is the most foollish thing of all.
Any striving to be foolish would accomplish the same thing as trying to be a know-it-all. Heck, might as well go for the highest rank of know-it-all if we had only those two choices!
But they're not the only two.
Surrender is the final choice when we realize both of the above are the same - and equally futile. (Which you already at least intellectually see for yourself by saying you'd be bound by another belief system. Precisely.) I'm not sure any persuasion helps. Or any faith helps. Sincere wanting helps. Sincere inquiry helps.
I think I know what you're saying. But it's not meant to be taken at faith, and added to our already awkward and heavy bevy of belief packages.
I suppose, and this is hard to swallow, it just hits one one day, that you simply realize you are not omniscient. You cannot possibly have every piece of information past, present, future to judge the current situation and so you end up okay with it as it is and maybe you sense that “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe,” as John Muir observed.
I ran into this poem the other day:
TRUST by Thomas R. Smith
From Waking Before Dawn
It's like so many other things in lifeto which you must say no or yes.
So you take your car to the new mechanic.
Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.
The package left with the disreputable-looking
clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
the envelope passed by dozens of strangers -
all show up at their intended destinations.
The theft that could have happened doesn't.
Wind finally gets where it was going
through the snowy trees, and the river, even
when frozen, arrives at the right place.
And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
is delivered, even though you can't read the address.
Beautiful. But trust almost implies trust in something other than. Trust in something.
What is that something? Sometimes I just like to call it life.
In Zen they say: “Don't seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions.”
Don't seek to be a fool. Can we watch how we place demands on the present moment? My housemate offered me a ride today (I'm car-free). I wanted to go to the Sunnyvale Borders, but she wasn't going there. In that moment I sensed the slightest tinge of a spoiled brat arising, “but I want to go to Borders!!” and I wondered if maybe there weren't a better plan in play in the universe. I asked her where she was going that could get me to a bookstore, and so I ended up on Castro St in Mountain View where not only could I peruse several bookstores, there are more cafes and shops and a bit of a downtown neighborhood vibe too. So it ended up a fine plan when I just went with the flow. I had gone to buy White Goddess and just hang out, but two bookstores didn't carry it anymore, and I thought. Well, that's okay. I had a good afternoon anyhow. Walking towards the bus, I pass by the used bookstore BookBuyers and I sensed it wasprobably in there. And it was - at used book prices - but it was truly okay either way with me.
Yes, this type of living leaves one feeling quite in the unknown.
But this isn't depressing. It's freeing. Ah, I don't have to know!! Hakuna matata! No worries!
You don't need to relish it, you are already doing it fine right now, whatever you are doing.
Usually we layer on top of what we are doing a conflict in form of an inner argument with what is going on in life. It's typically not fine the way it is because we know a better way. Or we're oh so sure we're royally screwing up (or they are.) Or if it is wonderfully fine, but we are worried that it might not be fine like this much longer.
So we mostly experience the strife, than the suchness of Life directly.
Life is happening, and happening, and happening, and you are part of life so you couldn't possibly be doing it wrong. (I know, I know this is really hard to believe, so might have to go on an hypothesis for a bit - but experiment, test it out).
I love this and I read it over and over and over again because I have this tendency to second-guess myself (a lot):
Ramana [Maharshi] is telling his student, “Every step that has ever been taken has led to me and was right.”
Question: Good, then I'm not entirely off, then?
Ramana: There are only right steps and right effort. The Self knows one hundred percent what it needs to find itself. At every moment it knows that completely, and it always takes the right step toward itself.
Q: I believe it. But why am I sitting here now?
Ramana: Because the Self has placed you there. - from The Myth of Enlightenment, by Karl Renz
Now, that is one woman that's an enlightened fool. I'll read anything she writes. (I'm still muddling through myself.)
“That's surrender. It's not negative. It's freedom because something [within] stops trying. Ah, it puts down the immense burden.”
I Surrender - Music and Lyrics by David Sylvian
“I opened up the pathway of the heart
The flowers died embittered from the start
That night I crossed the bridge of sighs and I surrendered
I looked back and glimpsed the outline of a boy
His life of sorrows now collapsing into joy
And tonight the stars are all aligned and I surrender
My mother cries beneath a southern sky and I surrender
Recording angels and the poets of the night
Bring back the trophies of the battles that we fight
Searchlights fill the open skies and I surrender
Outrageous cries of love have called me back
Derailed the trains of thought, demolished wayward tracks
You tell me I've no need to wonder why I just surrender
I stand too close to see the sleight of hand
How she found this child inside the frightened man
Tonight I'm learning how to fly and I surrender
I've travelled all this way for your embrace
Enraptured by the recognition on your face
Hold me now while my old life dies tonight and I surrender
My mother cries beneath the open skies and I surrender
An ancient evening just before the fall
The light in your eyes, the meaning of it all
Birds fly and fill the summer skies and I surrender
She throws the burning books into the sea
'Come find the meaning of the word inside of me'
It's alright the stars are all aligned and I surrender
My mother cries beneath the moonlit skies and I surrender
My body turns to ashes in her hands
The disappearing world of footprints in the sand
Tell me now that this love will never die and I'll surrender
My mother cries beneath the open skies and I surrender”
My blogging friend, Nick Smith, wrote an amazing, simply amazing post, Learning to Fly.
In comments, I reply:
Yep, I write to myself in multiplicate, as Nabokov said, too. Really seeing some resistance which is attached to this self-image as a knowledgeable person of good judgment. Ha, ha. I was growing frustrated lately when people asked me to explain myself, all sorts of "Why?" [and How?] questions irked me because I didn't know how to answer them without looking completely foolish (in their eyes).
Heard Adya last night. He was saying, and boy I needed to hear myself, that our "inner teacher is speaking coherently and clearly - but it's not what you expected. It says: "You don't know how."
Yikes! I would have thought the last thing I've ever ever ever wanted to be seen as foolish.
Yet last night I realized we are not only its servant, but it is ours. If and when I allow this grace, it appears as if things and people and places just come unbidden to me and effortlessly orchestrated, I don't have to go about fretting and canvassing. I suppose it is what Taoists call action through non-action.
I'm still getting used to it all though as it's topsy turvy from all that we're taught, but I'm muddling through okay. Quite okay, in fact.
We keep trying to manage Life, and you know it actually seems to know what it's doing without my meddling and worrying as I'm noticing more and more when I give her space to show me, and then move through me.
p.s.
image Jia Lu's Water