Beguiled: Chains

When I meditate it seems as if I change the place from which I am looking. Nothing changes except my perspective, but that’s all I need. I don’t have to change anything, just my perspective.

Chaos is always here.
Harmony is always here.
Suffering is always here.
Liberation from suffering is always here.

I know suffering when I am suffering.
I know liberation when I am awake.

But what is it that changes my perspective?
Do I change it? Is it what I am doing/not doing that changes it?
Or, does it merely change by itself, and it’s just that I happen to be paying attention at the time?

Then again, there is also a kind of cause and effect involved, is there not?
Something causes this change (or does it?)

It is said that if you break free from this chain of cause and effect, you are free to act, but when you are free, how will you act then?

This is the fear.

Then again, what if we are never independent from conditions? Then, I think we can only act within the parameters of all the conditions; we cannot depart from that.

If this is so then why do we make the judgments we make about people?

Or, maybe that too is conditioned.

Befuddled: September Discoveries

Decay

Everything is falling apart,
So much so that every time
Something else goes,
I fall down laughing!


Being

I come and go,
And yet there is no coming,
And no going.


Everything

When I’m in a bad mood,
Everything is in a bad mood.

Befriended: Nature Speaks

Will-o’-the-wasp?

A wasp got caught up
in a spider’s web outside my window.

‘I know exactly how you feel,’ I thought.

But then suddenly she broke free.

Effortlessly she hovered,
Her body pointing like an arrow.
“Follow me,” she seemed to say,
“This way is freedom.”


A Cloud’s Eye View

At the end of a violent storm in my area, I went outside to view the results. Overhead, the clouds were moving very fast.

“Does it hurt when the wind sends you tearing across the sky?” I asked.

I followed their progress from west to east with my eyes, and there I saw the rainbow.


Environ

Consider this: which is greater, the individual or the environment?
Although we may influence our environment, of which we are undoubtedly a part, I suspect its influence upon us is greater, especially in the long run.

But, look now: I am part of your environment; you are part of my environment. We are all part of each other’s environments. We are all individuals, and yet we are all environmental. We are all part of each other, and yet we are all apart from each other.