My Heart Remains Heavy

We're carrying on with daily life, now at our beach haven near Chumphon. Terra has been with us for 9 days, leaving tonight on her two day trek back to San Diego. Of course it's been good to share our experience with her, and hopefully she may begin to appreciate why we're here.

We went with her to one of the islands off the east coast, Koh Phangan, for just a couple of nights. My intention was to get some first impressions, just a taste, to see if it was anything like Pai, but at the beach, which we were led to believe it might be, in which case we would have an additional location that we might like to spend some extended time in. I'm not sure why we even thought about additional locations, when really, we're quite happy here, but we did, and the notion of a Pai at the beach had a certain appeal, even though in the last couple of days I've realized that, for all of our appreciation of what Pai has to offer in terms of feeling like some part of our "tribe" is there - that 70's hippy thing - we have no community there at all, while I've realized more strongly that we do in fact have a community right here at Thung Wua Laen.

Anyway, life goes on, daily enjoyments and joys, including my long morning walks on the beach, meetings with new friends, adventures driving a motorcycle with an elaborate side car contraption that accommodated all three of us on more than one outing, hanging out, going to the little town or the "big" city for bicycle shopping with Sidney and Gail, eating, newly riding bicycles and imagining expanding this endeavor (we did buy a bike for Nancy, and I'm now borrowing another one to find out if I might like to get more involved - I already expect that I do), visiting local areas of interest like the "monkey temple" with John and Helen from Oz (I was duly reprimanded by a self appointed lexicographer farang woman when I referred to it as the "monkey" temple: "Not monkey's! Lemurs!"), etc.

All this goes on, and in the midst of it all, simultaneous with the joys and the laughter and the fun and the calm and the everything, my heart remains heavy with the pain, grief and sorrow of what people are capable of doing, and not doing.  In a profound emotional and psychological way my world has been turned upside down. Nancy shared a very good article by Ken McLeod, about whom I know nothing other than that he is some kind of well respected Buddhist teacher, writer, scholar(?), translator(?), and apparently publisher of a newsletter called Unfettered Mind: Pragmatic Buddhism, in the December 2016, Number 29, issue of which appears this piece talking about "difficult feelings". I recommend it, and I assume it can be found online, but if you try and can't find it, let me know and I'll send it to you.

Part of my upside down-ness is this experience of heavy heartedness. You'll be aware for example that I'm not publishing photos of our experience in the last few blog posts. I haven't been taking many photos of things and people that I could well be photographing.  No motivation to do so. And I haven't been posting nearly as much of anything as I was. No motivation to do so. I'm living my experience, but I'm not motivated to display it, or share it much, or document it in the way I had been. It seems a bit irrelevant, or of considerably less importance, in light of how the world, and my experience of the world, has recently changed. I'm subliminally preoccupied, in the midst of my blessed daily life in our beautiful, happy, comfortable bit of tropical paradise, with digesting and integrating what it all will mean, or already means.

So here's a little update, just because I do still want to be in touch, and I do still want to express what I'm up to. I'm just up to something very different right now than I was before November 8, 2016, and I suppose I will be up to this something different for a while yet, time being what it is, and leaving it open being what it is, and the relatively unstructured life in retirement being what it might be.

Until next time, then.

The Slow Return

It's been good to talk with newer and older friends about all this  over the last weeks. Many people are or have been in shock, in deep grief, in disbelief, in fear, in confusion. Sharing this experience has helped me begin to come to terms with the implications. I'm not in a place of resolution, but I've begun to feel myself return from the depths of despair and terror. In the spirit of practicing/being in Grace and Easefulness, the direction I'm taking is toward the full embrace of surrender to what is, to begin with. Where that will lead I can't say just yet. I do believe we are experiencing further manifestations of the darkness of the Kali Yuga.  I do believe there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth, or as we would more likely say today, heightened death and destruction of all kinds.
 
It is clear that those who are now in power in America, and also, according to our European friends at Sherabling, in some cases abroad as well, are Fascist promulgators of much that will welcome, advance, inform, energize and promote this death and destruction. There is no way to completely avoid this, in my opinion. There won't be a Savior or a Messiah arriving to clear the decks and make all things loving and wonderful. The saviors and the messiahs that we might  like to see reside within each of us, and they can be cultivated and nourished, or not.

People will suffer in the next years. Basic services that we Americans have come to rely upon, somewhat paltry though they are in comparison to many other places, will change, be diminished, or disappear. Human rights that have been won with blood and dedication will be diminished or will disappear. Hate speech and hate driven actions will increase, and will be not only tolerated, but encouraged. More people will die as a result of this. Our Earth will be further degraded for profit, and out of profound greed, stupidity and ignorance. Amen.

Not a particularly hopeful picture, I admit. But I haven't yet arrived at hopefulness. I'm still coming to terms with the truth as I see it. If we were dealing with rationality, there might be sensible reason to be hopeful. Of course we aren't. We are dealing with the deepest, darkest, basest aspects of the human psyche, driven not by reason or compassion or caring or wisdom, but by fear, megalomania, unbridled power, violence, lust, and dissociation. There's nothing rational going on here, and so I don't believe we can hope for reasonable behaviors or resolutions just yet. We are being subsumed within the irrational drives of wildly out of control Egotism.

So. Allow me to be a bit psycho-analytical for a moment. We all have within us these same capabilities. I could be, and have been in my perhaps smaller ways, a rigid, controlling and dominating fascist. I am or have been a hater and fear monger. I could be a murderer, a rapist, a power glutton, a war and money addict. And so could you. There is nothing alien or other worldly or incomprehensible here. On the contrary, it is entirely comprehensible and familiar. And it is, simply, the failure to admit, to acknowledge, and to integrate healthfully these psychic components that has brought us to this point. The great Shadow is upon us, only because we, as a species, and our current leaders most dramatically at the moment, prefer to ascribe these qualities to "others" who are "outside" of ourselves: our "enemies", who are the cause of all of our unhappiness and woes and troubles and frustrations and hard times, and who must therefor be rightfully blamed for and made responsible for it all.

Oh Lord, there's nothing new under the sun. This has been, and continues to be the desperate story of human kind on Planet Earth, at least in this Dark Age. There have always been exceptions however, and these are the blazing light figures who inspire us. Their message has never been an easy one, or one that will guarantee escape from the pains and trials of the human condition. It is precisely because of this though that they inspire. For those of us who have seen some of this light, who yearn for a truly and more fully human possibility, there isn't much choice, I think. We must be, after all, the change we want to see.

And so I accept the challenge of the moment: to re-commit myself to the path of wisdom, of love, of compassion, of service to humanity and to Truth. I think of the Prayer of St. Francis at this moment: Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.......................
Or the Bodhisattva of Mahayana Buddhism, dedicated to serving and fostering the enlightenment and liberation of all sentient beings for all time.
Or the teaching of Tikkun Olam, that we work to repair the world that has been torn asunder.
Or the Sermon On The Mount, in which blessed are the peacemakers, and the gentle, and the pure in heart and the merciful.
Or Thich Nat Han's breath taking poem, Call Me By My True Names.

I remember Gandhi, and King, and the Buddha and the Christ and the Baal Shem Tov, and Kabir and Rumi and Mirabai and the countless other carriers of the light of Truth, all of whom, we must remember, experienced a good deal of pain and suffering, either voluntarily or otherwise, on their paths of great Light in the face of great darkness.

My prayer today is that I be able to surrender, gracefully and fully to God's Will, not my will, and see where that takes me. May it be so. Amen.