A Spiritual Journey
by Wendell Berry
And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet
and learn to be home.
Wendell Berry passed recently, a favorite poet of mine. He was leading an academic life and walked away from it to just write, to focus on just writing. Walked away from the steady salary... from the position. He had a gift. And that poem, or that little mini essay above, spoke to me and made me think about our practice. It applies in so many different ways.
We might imagine that we are on a very long journey to some far distant shore of Nirvana, and we're paddling away here in our rowboat together to try to get across the river. But we're stuck in samsara, stuck in the mud, unable to make any progress, and we think, well, this definitely can't be it. Then we read this beautiful poem. Cast your bucket down where ye are. Touch the earth, touch the earth. We look outside the present moment again and again, and the invitation is to just return. This is what we seek, this life; where else could it be? We imagine that what we seek is some future life. It is this life, it is never any other life than the one we are living. That is exactly what we seek.
A word that resonates for me is presence. But this is not a presence that excludes past and future. It includes them. A presence that includes the fruition of ancient karma, and that is planting seeds for the future. And yet, it is always here in this very moment. All of it included in this presence. I think dharma teachers sometimes are careful not to use the word presence as an object of practice because it can become very quickly dualistic, meaning we imagine that therefore we should not be thinking about the future or remembering anything, ever. If I ever have a memory, I'm practicing badly. And we start judging ourselves. Remember, this presence is all inclusive. Nothing is excluded from this very moment.
There another passage by Wendell Berry that I want to share with you.
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water
and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water
and I feel above me the day,
blind stars waiting in their light.
For a time, I rest in the grace of the world
and am free.
Once again, this invitation to wake into the present. The presence of still water. There is something so healing in our practice of just returning, returning to the moment that we're in. The mind conjures so many fantasies.
Some of you know that I recently retired from teaching high school. And interestingly, I thought that the moment September kicked in, I would be feeling nothing but utter bliss as my colleagues all went back to work, and interestingly, I did have moments like that. I don't want to make anybody jealous so I won't go too much into that. But it involves some dancing in supermarket ailes. Having said that, I also did find myself, uh, filled with worry on a few occasions.
So there's worry, there's anxiety, there's fear, there's terror. These all seem to be orders of magnitude of a similar emotion. And I was worried. I was worried that I'm not gonna have enough money. I started running the numbers over and over, rather obsessively. Just making sure that the calculations I'd done the year before were correct. But we can't predict the future, can we? Hard as I might try, no matter how many times I run the numbers, there's no way that I could guarantee my future safety.
Sometimes I worry about my son. I love my children. My son bought a motorcycle. Now, some of us are cheering inwardly because we've ridden motorcycles, and we're thinking, good for him. If he were your son, you might not be thinking "good for him." You might be thinking, oh shit. Because you know that an inordinate number of fatalities happen riding motorcycles. And especially for newbies. I could certainly spend a lot of time worrying about that.
I've spent some time in fear about AI recently. I've been thinking about all of these industry leaders who are stepping forth and saying, hey, government, would you mind putting the brakes on what we're doing? 'Cause we're gonna destroy the world if you don't. And then an executor who says, Ah, it's not that bad. And it makes me worry that we're not paying attention to what we're doing.
I think about our environment, the climate crisis, the direction we're headed, and I worry about my children, our children, the future of this planet.
So, fear, worry, our concerns, they come to us all. You are not alone if you are visited by worry or fear, whatever yours may be; we each have their own. We each have our own favorites, our oldies but goodies, that we return to again and again.
But our fear is not only fear, is it? Much like grief is an expression of loss for someone whom we adored. I think fear is an expression of care for someone or something that feels threatened. It's an expression of trepidation about losing someone or something that we care very much about. We are afraid that we will lose something that is important to us. And so, of course, the deeper we look into our fear, the more we find that at its heart is love, is this care that we have for someone or something. I think that our afflictive emotions are pretty much all this way. When we feel hatred for someone, it is because we are troubled that they are hurting someone or something that we love. So often our shadowy emotions are cast by a great light. And that great light is often love. And it is taking this potentially shadowy form, and we wish it would perhaps just take its original form.
But our minds can spin all kinds of stories. I was doing some research on the interwebs and I came across this wonderful description in a paper that said, fear and excitement trigger similar chemical responses in the brain activating physical symptoms, like a racing heart and increased adrenaline. The key difference lies in how the brain interprets these sensations, labeling them either as a threat, fear, or positive experience, excitement. So that also really struck me that these things that we think of as negative are maybe not so far from the light source after all. That fear very well may be an expression of great care. And when we look deeply into our fear, perhaps we can unearth what it is that we want to protect and that we love so much and come into contact with that love.
When I realize that I am scared for our environment, I, of course, am telling stories about what may happen to it, and this is not unimportant. It's actually important for us to be able to be with our fear, to recognize where there may be threats. And I think, though, that we can then become paralyzed in our fear. We can run the numbers over and over and over again, obsessively, trying one scenario after another. But this does not actually address the issue. It is important for us to check the facts, I think, because sometimes our fears are baseless. So it is useful to be able to alleviate our fear when it is based in a kind of hallucination or misinformation. But some of the time, it is not. Some of the time there is real basis for our feelings. And this presents us with the opportunity to see that something we love is under threat. And then we can respond.
I've said before that for me it is very helpful in responding to do my best to be in touch with not just the shadow, but the light. To recognize what it is that I do love, and to act from that place as much as possible.
It has been very beautiful and lovely this fall to take walks as the sun is beginning to set in the early evening, to see the way the light lands on the changing foliage, to even come across little patches of dry leaves along the sidewalk and to kick them the way I did when I was a boy, to see them fly up into the air, to feel deeply the beauty of this world to breathe the cool air in the autumn. To feel that briskness. and to see the colors in the very tips of certain trees. To go out when possible into the woods, the way Wendell Berry describes, to sit by a body of water, to watch a duck turn itself upside down and have its triangular butt floating up in the air as its legs paddle away. I presume it's feeding on something, or they do it for fun. I don't know which. But it's funny. And it's weirdly beautiful. And there are so many simple, beautiful things to love, to come back in touch with what it is that we actually care for. This is healing. This is nourishing.
And of course, our reminder, again and again: the serenity prayer. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference." There are things that we can change. And for my part, sometimes it is very useful to actually make a plan and to respond. So now that I have a bit more free time, you better believe I wrote to all my legislators about what's going on with AI. It's important to speak your piece, to do what you can do, whatever that may be, no matter how small it may seem.
One of the most important observations in the Buddhist tradition is that everything is, in fact, connected. We talk about the way this makes us all vulnerable. So when a neighbor burns tons of garbage in their backyard, yes, we smell it in our yard, even though there's a property line. In fact, it blows in the house. And is disgusting. So, this is, of course, a metaphor for the way that we poison each other's air, imagining that I'm only poisoning "my air," not yours, or that it simply vanishes. But causes have effects. So we have a responsibility to one another in this context of how deeply interwoven we all are, literally breathing the same air. Eating food that has grown out of the earth, do we want that earth to be poisoned? So, this importance of our care for all beings. Caring for all beings is caring for ourselves.
So, we have this vulnerability, but we also have a great power in this interconnected web of life. Because when we touch one end of the web, the entire web shakes. We may think that what we do doesn't matter. We may think it is ridiculous to try. It's just calling one more legislator who is already paid off by the lobbyists. But if we are if we are really honest, the truth is that we don't know. We don't know what might be the tipping point for that person to take action. We don't know what might shift a vote. We don't know what might make a bill come into being that doesn't exist. We don't know how this is all gonna play out. We don't know that our children are doomed. This is all just projection in the present. And we are the ones who can plant the seeds for the future.
So there is a time to do what we can. There are also certain things that we cannot control. And those are more difficult to accept. We are all going to die. Every one of us. Of course, that sounds like terrible news. But it isn't necessarily bad news at all. I invite you to practice, and to look deeply into that koan. The great matter of life and death. To wonder about it. It can be helpful to face our greatest fears, knowing that we can't control the ultimate outcome in certain cases. We are left accepting that outcome. And this too is a relief.
But each of us has to find our way to that. Each of us has to look deeply into the great matter of life-and-death. And as we read in our liturgy, "See fear, just say yes. And see what happens. When we do this, another world opens up." And as James Ford likes to say, "there is another world, and it is this one." This is the other world that opens up when we accept the great matter of life and death, when we penetrate the great matter of life and death. We are born again into this life. Enormous possibility here. This is the importance of our practice.
There is the active side of practice, and there is the contemplative side of practice. And these two are both essential. For in this present moment, we find the emptiness of form. And our project is to awaken to this presence. Recognizing that it is always vanishing, the moment is always dying and being born again.
Just like you.
And the incredible possibility in that.