By the fire

We were camping in the Redwoods National Park in early autumn. Night approached, we started or small bonfire in the fire pit. Gathering around the fire is something most of us love. Few activities give us a greatest feeling of togetherness. And although it may sound redundant, of warmth. Richard and I prepared the firewood, splitting the bigger pieces with an ax. Good ax handle. I’ve been using axes since I was about four. If you use an ax, you know how important is the handle. Axes and fire are much related. Su Dongpo, the Sung Dynasty poet, painter, calligrapher and genius wrote, living water should be cooked with living fire. My daughter and her mother were in care of cooking with the portable butane stove. Cooking with fire.

Once we had our bonfire on, I looked around a little. There were modern tents, some amazingly comfortable modern RVs, modern cars. Most of us had left our houses, to spend a few days camping in the middle of the ancient redwoods forest. We set our tents by the 500 year old trees. They were our homes for those days. The cell phones had no signal in the forest. All we could hear was the soft whispering sound of Smith river, the night insects, and the burning firewood. Our hearts were filled with an immense joy, a joy not easily matched. Not the sort of exhilarating joy that takes you up, and then comes down. It was the joy of quietness. Even. Without ups and downs. Instead of hangover, it leaves you an unstoppable awareness of wholeness, of having joined the dance of the universe.

I looked at Richard and said, “isn’t it funny?” — “What?” he asked. I said, “look around. There’s so many people camping here, and gathering round the fire. We work so much to get all that technology, our modern cars (although mine is a ’51 Land Rover), the sophisticated houses. Then, we leave all that behind, to find joy just by camping in a forest, and gathering round the fire. Just like thousands of years ago.” We looked at each other and laughed. Gathering round the fire is something most of us love the most.

Dog's luck?

What do you do when things don’t come out the way you expected? You have carefully planned your agenda with the utmost care. It may be a long weekend in a beach, and then comes a big storm. It bloody contradicts the weather forecast… but it is there. Not to talk about some business appointment, that is also unexpectedly frustrated. Blimey! Whom do you take it with? Or you may also think it’s destiny. Fate. Give it the name you like the most. There must be some invisible hand, invisibly moving invisible strings, that visibly frustrates the appointment. But, after all… what is that thing called fate?

A man once went to see a sage, to ask him what fate is. The sage looked deeply into the man’s eyes. After a while he said, assumptions.

— “Assumptions? How is that?” asked the surprised bloke.

— “Easy to say” replied the sage. “You assume something will go well. Then it doesn’t. You call it bad luck. You assume something will go wrong. Then it goes well. You call it good luck. You assume that certain things will happen or not. Your lack of intuition is so, that you don’t know what will happen. You assume that the future is unknown. When you are caught out, you call it Fate.”

There is certainly something beyond our control. Beyond the weather forecast, beyond the World Leaders. Sometimes it startles us, like the unforecasted storm. We have seen this many times in our lives. But the principle behind this is something deeper that simply calling it fate, destiny, predestination, manifest destiny, unmanifest fate or what the fate. It is some sort of alarm clock that tells us that we may have been putting our attention in the wrong direction. We may have been taking the results for the cause. This needs a stop. A stop to be taken several times a day, to stop living on assumptions. Like when we come to crossroads and stop to take a look at the road map. If we don’t, we may be barking up the wrong tree. Arf!

To shine like the stars

Have you ever waited ten hours in an airport for your next flight? It is more than the third part of a day. Having arrived there from Atlanta, I was in Salt Lake City airport, waiting for my flight to Southern Oregon. Those ten hours were good for a rest, and to write some travel notes. Also, an opportunity for contemplation and reflection. Airports are very interesting, because so many different people from all around the world are there.

After lunch, I decided to contemplate people. Backpackers backpacking. One carrying just a messenger bag. A man with a nice shirt and fine red-brown shiny shoes, with almost no luggage. Young girls all by themselves, maybe only for a while. Nice faces, bored faces, cool people, weird people. Young, old, babies, infants and children. Thousands of stories, some of them intermingling with one another. I wished I could to hear those stories. There’s so much to learn from everyone.

All that people reminded me of a Zen story in ancient China. The emperor was on a terrace with a Zen master, watching the Yang Tze river. Hundreds of boats were sailing to and from different parts of China. The emperor was elated at the sight. He asked the master, “how many boats you think are there, sailing our country?” The master replied, “I see only two. One is called fame, the other is called profit. That is what most of that people are living for.” I wondered how many of the people I saw in the airport were after that too.

We spend so much of our given time looking for the pot at the end of the rainbow. It’s here today, and gone tomorrow. There are the stars in the night sky. They serve us to find our way when sailing the oceans. Some of those stars were extinguished several thousands of years ago. But their light still travels throughout the universe, and guide our way. There were men of old who have left traces for us. Art, literature, philosophy, buildings… they left us an example, and a guide for our life. They shine in the sky of our lives, like the light of the stars. Can we say they are dead?

We can give our time to the quest for the pot at the end of the rainbow. We can also find a balanced way, and give some time to leave something behind us. Something that cannot be destroyed by fire or water. That is not lost if the stock market falls down. Something that will take us to shine like the stars, forever and ever.

Between worlds

Hidden in the mist, Grizzly Peak and half the town cannot be seen. There is an atmosphere of poetic mystery. Like in the haiku:

In the dense mist
What is being shouted
Between hill and boat?

A mist creates an atmosphere of mystery. The Thuata de Dannan arrived to Ireland in a magic mist. It gives the idea of a gate to another world, like the Irish expression Idir Eathru, that means between worlds, but it’s more suggestive. Like a mist, that is neither solid nor liquid. It could be the beginning of a fairy tale. Quite early one morning, looking out of the window, the mountain is hidden in a mist. Later, some two hours before midday, the mist fades away and, lo and behold! There is no mountain, but the vast winter ocean.

How would you feel if that would actually happen? What emotions would arise in your heart? Fear? Amazement? Astonishment? The joy of adventure? Would you ask your cat, and then wonder what he meant by meoooow? No matter what emotions, they would be intense: before you, the impossible has become possible. When we are startled, our emotions become intense. It feels as if we don’t have room in our heart-mind for what startles us. We are too attached to forms. Our conditioning leads us to put things-events into boxes. These boxes don’t necessarily match reality, they are just useful to keep some things going. Sometimes, however, we take the boxes for reality. It is similar to taking the weight for the thing weighted.

Thoughts and emotions are closely related. Emotions generate thoughts. Thoughts generate emotions. The power of literature is that it takes us to emotional states through our thoughts. Poetry can do it with a few words, like waves from a pebble thrown in a lake. Some startling thoughts and emotions makes us uneasy because we don’t have a box for them. Maybe we have one, but not large enough. We use a box instead of the mind. Boxes are limited. The mind is not. The mind is like empty space. It contains our planet, the sun, the moon, the solar system, the milky way galaxy and innumerable galaxies more. Such is the nature of the mind. Thoughts and emotions arise in the mind. Then, fade away. Another one comes and fades away… in the mind. Like small waves.

Instead of boxes, we can remain in a relaxed awareness of the mind, the box as limitless as empty space. There we have room for mountain and ocean. Then, if the fairy tale comes true… let’s share a cup of tea on the beach!

Being in love

“I’m in love,” told me my neighbor.

“Congratulations!” I said, and asked, “you know what it means?”

“I thought I was broken, but now I see I’m not,” he replied.

I said, “it means that you can love. To fall in love, you must be able to love.”

He’s twenty six. We have a great reservoir of idealism and romanticism at that age. We should never loose it. They are a great strength, a great force. When I was even younger than my neighbor, I used to go to a jazz spot. There was a poster on one wall. It was a rather grotty (grotesque) face, with entangled hair and bugs walking on it. The face was saying, “I love you, and today everything seems beautiful to me”. My neighbor’s face reflected exactly that. It seemed funny to me, that my yesterday’s post had something to do with love. And today this chap said he was in love. When we are in love, we see the world with different eyes.

We don’t need, however, limit ourselves to be in love with a human being. We can be in love with life in all it’s forms. The rock breaking in the grass, the light of setting sun, giving its colors to mountains, rivers and oceans. The food we eat. “Oh, I love you so much that I would eat you, dear soup of mine.” Up to the smallest bread crumb we can love. And everything looks different.

This will work as long as it’s not a simple emotional lack of objectivity. On the contrary, genuine love is conscious love, the fruit of awareness, of seeing with objectivity and equanimity. In the case of romantic, personal love, it does not consist of hiding under the carpet what we don’t like of the other one. We love our beloved because he/she is the way he/she is. As in the words of the Beatles’ song, “cos the things you do, endear you to me, oh you know I will.”

We don’t need to be teenagers to be in love. We don’t need to be twenty six to be in love. What we need is awareness. The awareness that comes from mindfulness. Appreciate things-events by what they are. We need, simply, being able to love, and that is inherent to all of us. Love like children do. That’s their happiness. So, like in the poster, don’t worry about the bugs taking a stroll on your head. Be like my neighbor. Just fall in love, and make a toast to him and his beloved: may their union be always happy! and if you want to give it a little Irish touch, raise your glasses and say

May they live as long as they want
And never want as long as they live
Sláinte!

Winter thoughts

Winter is here, along with its emotions. Many may have not noticed it. But it is here. It does not start on the 21st December. That is an average day for the solstice. The solstice of the middle of winter. The beginning is on Halloween. Or to call it by it's real name in Gaelige, Samhain. It marks the beginning of winter. Here, in the Pacific Northwest, winter is before our eyes. In Ashland, Grizzly Peak has become invisible in the morning, hidden by the clouds.

Some suffer the winter blues. SAD. Cabin sickness... Besides the physical reasons, there may be some others. One of them is not recognizing the spirit and meaning of the season. It is the time for introspection. If posible, for staying in as much as we can. All animals hibernate in some way or another. In the plants, the sap goes down to their roots. It is the time to go down to our roots. Direct our gaze inwards. Meeting with ourselves, a meeting we must have, sooner or later.

Winter is the season related to impermanence, to death. Samhain, or Halloween, a Celtic celebration, is the one in which we get in touch with our Ancestors, who are in the Otherworld, and honor them. This issue makes some people uneasy. We don't like thinking about our own death. But that moment will arrive. When we are born, we cannot avoid our entrance to this world. And when we die, we can't avoid leaving it. Our time in this world is somehow a preparation for the next. Life never ends, its forms are innumerable. We usually take death as the opposite of life, but it is not so. The opposite of death, is birth. Life in this world is the span of time between birth and death. Life is always there. What is most important is our love of life. What is most important is to love.

The ability to love is not limited to romantic love. We speak about brotherly love, motherly love, and so on. What is common to them, is love. It is like water. If we put it in a round container it will take the round form. If in a square one, square. But roundness and squareness are not properties of the water. The same with love. Our ability to love will take any of the shapes. Romantic, brotherly, patriotic, motherly... as long as we can love.

Winter is here. The time for gathering round the fire, with the people we love. To share the stories we love. To drink the tea we love. The wine we love. To love watching the leaves flying away from the trees. Listening to the music we love. Reading the poetry we love. Writing what we love to write. Eating the stews we love... Winter is a good time to love, and... can you be sad when you love?

Halloween — Samhain

Halloween was cloudy short after sunrise. One could still wonder about this afternoon's parade. There were dark clouds yesterday, and, very thin raindrops falling. It rained during the night, was still cloudy after dawn... and the sky cleared up later. The parade is not in risk of being one in the rain. With so many Irish descendants here, one may well believe that some of the Siddhe came along with them in the ships. For those who don't know it (if there are still any), Halloween is, actually, Samhain, a Celtic celebration. Some say it's the Celtic New Year, some say it's not. Whatever it be, it is certainly a Celtic celebration, that has a lot to do with the Siddhe, the people of the Otherworld.

Although many associate the Gentry or the wee folk with the Leprechauns, actually, the Siddhe are not only these shoemakers. Some of them look exactly like us, the ordinary humans. Anyone who remembers the words of the traditional Irish song The Star of the County Down, will notice that the lad takes the beautiful colleen (girl in Gaelige) for one of the fairies, the Siddhe. The Siddhe are not a mere superstition. Nobel laureate William Butler Yeats, the great Irish Bard wrote a book compiling stories about them. He collected actual experiences of real people, who had close encounters with the gentry. And Dr. W.Y. Evans Wents' first book was, precisely, The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. He did it, in part, out of respect for his ancestors, for his roots. Many have either forgotten, or worst, lost their roots. It is rather sad. Think what happens to a wonderful tree if it looses his roots (his, not its). The same happens to us. We may remain as a wonderful tree... but a dry one. We see many of them daily.

Hopefully we'll have a great day today. Here in Ashland Oregon there will be a parade in Main Street. Lot's of fun to all of us, trick and treating... we should have good music and dancing and eating too. After all, so many consider this the Celtic New Year, and, astronomically, it makes sense. For all of us who have Celtic roots, whether Irish, Scottish, Galician or otherwise... let us not forget our ancestors. This is the time of the year to celebrate with them. Eat and drink and dance and have fun with them. As the song goes, Let us drink and be merry, all grief to refrain / For we may and might never all meet here again. Happy Halloween... and enjoy my window!!!