entering fully

Life is a boundless matrix of dynamic relationships. 

Ultimately, every action reverberates throughout the universe. 

I responding to you. 

You responding to me. 

This responding to that. 

That responding to this.

Responsiveness is the living heart of being and becoming. 

Atoms, molecules, organs and organisms, families and societies; 

entire ecosystems, biospheres, planets and galaxies; 

all shifting, responding, constantly changing.

Each birthing of this is a dying of that.

Each dying of that is a birthing of this. 

Responsive change is the very nature and fabric of what is.

Permanence is a mental abstraction; a hope, a need, 

a convenient but potentially deadening freezing 

of the actual creative dynamic of all our lives in action.

Suffering arises through trying to fix or make permanent 

what is essentially a seamless fluid process.

May we cease grasping at permanence and

with heartful confidence, love, enthusiasm and wide awake sensitivity, 

enter fully the great birthing/dying matrix of responsive relating;

this ineffable, un-pin-down-able, present blessing of now.

With thanks: Tarchin Hearn
Green Dharma Treasury
Photo: Peter Bowers

lightly my darling

It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos,
no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered.






Aldous Huxley
Island
Photo:  Peter Bowers