Category Archives: Photography

August Break: Day 24

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the sky this morning

Even after all this time
the sun never says to the earth, “You owe Me.”
Look what happens with a love like that,
It lights up the Whole Sky.
~Hafiz

I continue to practice living with uncertainty, impermanence. This shaky, uncomfortable quality of life is so tender, so terrifying. I admit that I have moments of blind panic, where my sanity starts to slip and my perception blurs, when confusion and anxiety and despair cocoon around me. I forget that I can change my mind, take a walk or have something to eat, that I am loved and connected, not alone.

But this is the essence of practice. Sometimes, you can stay with the moment, be gentle with yourself, sit with your thoughts and emotions as they rage and quake, not running away or grasping or rejecting or numbing out, but rather peacefully abiding until they naturally dissolve. Sometimes, you just can’t. And yet, you continue to try, to practice, to show up with your open heart, broken and whole all at the same time.

You don’t give up, but you practice letting go, surrendering, again and again and again, the same way the sun rises and sets, every day–some days you don’t even see it, don’t look up, don’t notice, aren’t even awake when it happens, and other days it makes you stop, throw back your head and stare, unable to believe that a thing so beautiful could even exist. And through it all, it’s the same sky, the same sun, rising and sinking, simply doing what it does, fundamentally good and completely natural–just like all of us.

There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth,
Beyond us all,
beyond the heavens,
beyond the highest, the very highest heavens.
This is the light that shines in our hearts.
~Chandogya Upanishad

August Break: Day 23

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I’ve heard fear described as “False Evidence Appearing Real,” and also as “Fuck Everything And Run.” However you choose to look at it, most of the time it isn’t helpful. The anxiety, anticipation, worry, tension, and stress I’ve felt in the last week has caused my hair to fall out, upset my stomach, disturbed my ability to eat and sleep in a healthy way, depleted my physical energy and health, triggered strong emotions, and shook my sanity. None of these things has been useful, none of them altered the outcome, changed reality in any way, other than weakening my ability to deal with it.

So I am trying to stay in the moment, stick with what’s really going on right now. I am trying to stay open to both the tenderness and the terror. When I stick with that, I can take a long walk with Dexter in the morning, and in those moments, he doesn’t have cancer and isn’t dying. I can watch him resting after and know that he is happy and well, in this moment. That’s all I’ve got right now, and I am trying my best to stay with it–to know what I know, to touch what is right in front of me.

There’s also a watermelon growing in our flowerbed. We didn’t plant it on purpose. It’s probably seeded from one we composted last summer.

The squash growing in the same flower bed, ones we planted on purpose, have huge blossoms.

Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that’s all that’s happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction.

On the other hand, wretchedness–life’s painful aspect–softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody’s eyes because you feel you haven’t got anything to lose–you’re just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We’d be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn’t have enough energy to eat an apple.

Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together. ~Pema Chödrön