To Be Or Not to Be?

During our lifetimes, we develop perspectives through our experiences, our feelings and our thoughts—perspectives on ourselves, our relationships, and so many areas beyond—even on a world view. 

Granted, there are many and various factors forming our perspectives, both nature and nurture—our innate tendencies, our upbringing, our education, our biases, as well what we are exposed in cultural, sociological, political and religious/spiritual influences.

Often, we may not be aware, or only dimly aware, of precisely what those perspectives are. Can we articulate our perspectives if asked to do so? Either by choice (which I believe is rare), or in crisis, or other threshold situations, we may need or wish to reflect on our perspectives—how and why they are what they are or have become; in doing so we may rethink them to some degree or even change them.

Reflection takes effort and deep thinking and may either affirm our perspectives, which is reassuring, or reveal a need to modify them. If we are thorough and insightful, we may find our perspectives are based in large part on our hopes and/or fears. We may discern minor or major inconsistencies, in other words, cognitive dissonance: mental discomfort experienced when holding two or more contradictory beliefs, values, or attitudes simultaneously, or when behavior conflicts with beliefs. It is a reality, too, in our use of social media, we may not have a full picture on anything, with its use of alogrithims to put us in niches so that we see and hear mostly what we already believe.

All world religions have ethical, moral, and behavioral codes derived from religious texts or other philosophical outlooks. Most religions have  ways or certain times designated to reflect and evaluate to affirm, or not, adherence to those codes. For example, in Catholicism there is an "examination of conscience” when preparing for the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation (Confession). In Judaism there is a ten-day period spanning from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur which is dedicated to introspection and atonement. Based on such reflection, perspectives will not change, but there will be a heightened awareness of how those codes may have been transgressed. 

On the other hand, there are so manyd other areas to reflect upon; politics is a common one where people have set, long-held perspectives of belief and faith in a party or elected officials because of stated policies, programs and campaign promises. However, if that party or office holders do not fulfill promises, or display extremes, lack the decorum unbecoming the office held, or if there is proof of corruption in motivation or governance, it may be time to pause and rethink the false perspective on party or policticians, realizing what is actually true rather what was once believed or hoped for.

  

It may be rare, or even impossible to sort out, either by choice or by necessity precisely what our perspectives are and why; however if we never consciously consider identifying or defining them—even in part, we cannot be certain that our perspectives are accurate, and that our beliefs are valid.

In order to evaluate and explore our perspectives, we must be curious, open minded and open hearted. Most of all, we must be more willing to rethink and shift perspectives wholly or in part, rather than continue to look for only that which confirms what we think we know.

Our perspectives shape our lives in many ways. They can be dark, damaging and/or desructive to ourselves or others. Or they can shape our lives with the light of passion and purpose, growth and connection. Evaluating them may root out the inconsistencies and negativities that hold us back from that light. 

“Life is defined not by what we let go, but what we let in.” (unknown source)

“If a man does not master his circumstances, then he is bound to be mastered by them.” 

(Amor Towels, in A Gentlemen in Moscow)

QUEEN OF THE NIGHT

For this only will I awaken:

the blooming of the night flower

to touch the thinness of its petals
inhale the fragrance of its perfume

Whose beauty lights the evening
 between darkness and myself

HERE AND NOW

Original Cover of Walden

Here

where everything and nothing is real

Now

when there is no truth

 and all paths lead

everywhere and nowhere

Refuse to stand at either pole

or be forever lost in between

One thing is clear

YOU are a fixed star

All things exist in relation to you

orbit in your sphere

are held in balance by you—

Here and Now

Time is relative.
Isn’t everything? It’s all a matter of perspective and perception. Sir Isaac Newton found that time is absolute, “flowing uniformly for all observers," while Albert Einstein found time to be relative, related to gravity and velocity. Hello, Isaac and Albert, but I do not understand Newton’s concept of Absolute Time nor Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. I do know my experience of time is slower when I am enduring things unpleasant or boring, and faster when enjoying the joyful and pleasant things in life. 
I once heard John Lennon describe time as, "that which keeps everything from happening at once.”
Imagine that!
Now in my late 70’s, looking back on my life, I can say that time went absolutely and relatively quickly. Seems to me an average lifespan is not long enough. Long enough for what? Maybe to have experienced time more in the present than in the future or the past?
        "Time is a but a stream I go a-fishing in.” Hello, Henry David Thoreau, whose thoughts are far easier to grasp than are Einstein’s, Newton’s, or John Lennon’s for that matter. Thoreau’s statement in Walden: or a Life in Woods is worth further consideration, as are: "There is more to life than increasing its speed” and "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." 
Thoreau's description of time as a stream to go fishing in suggests that time just "IS," and we can leisurely cast in and out of its eternal waters, pulling out what we will without an awareness of time itself.” What would Thoreau have to say about how we live now? By the calendar and clock for our day, week, month and year, crammed with obligations, responsibilities, urgencies, distractions and pre-occupations. 
How much more so is our speed and desperation, with the nation/world in seeming chaos, and we intent on “getting it all done”—maybe stressed, anxious and often neglectful of more important demands and pleasures of the mind, heart and soul; of each other, and of the gifts of nature?  When we find time, or make it, we are on our devices with apps downloaded for everything imaginable--scrolling social media or news, playing video games or binge-watching TV.
        Yep! We have once again been cast out of The Garden, having taken a huge bite of an Apple of another kind!
        There seems to be no end in sighjt—unless we stop to dip into “the stream," forgetting that time exists at all. Thoreau's thoughts are still relevant today, except that our desperation is not "quiet." It's loud and clear; the pace of life has exponentially escalated! 

        Thoreau saw where we were headed at the speed of light. And yet, how could he have imagined that we would be headed back to the future, going chronologically forward in time, but stuck in unaddressed grievances from the Civil War,  and ongoing racial, gender, and human rights concerns?  
        Don’t get me started!
        We live in the present, yet, our thoughts are most often focused on the past or future. Remaining “in the moment” is difficult, which becomes obvious when we attempt to meditate or clear our minds of brain chatter. Being in the present seems more possible when we are in love (with a person or a project). Then no one or nothing else exists. Being present also seems more possible when we are with children, who compel us (if we are attentive and follow their lead) to live and love each moment, mostly in the imagination of play and the thrill of discovery.
         I became well aware of “not-living-in-the-present” mode when visiting our four-year old grandson, Finn. I told him I would be leaving “tomorrow” and that I would be sad to leave. Without skipping a beat, he said, “It’s not tomorrow now.” The simple truth of Finn’s words penetrated my being. I had rather selfishly imposed the future on him when he lives only in the present. He urged me to be truly with him—not to worry about “tomorrow," rather to experience the joy of our being together in the here and now.
        When my mind is filled with the past and future, or drifts off to realize the absurdity of our existence on our little blue planet, orbiting our sun star, spinning madly through dark, cold, infinite space, I have to stop, put up my imaginary "Gone Fishin" sign and be still—sit under a tree, gaze at the starry sky. As my mind is calmed and silenced, I begin to “just be” to feel the warmth of the sun, the coolness of a breeze, to hear the sound of lake water lapping the shore, or, at summer’s end, to hear the crickets, “so thin a splinter of singing.”* Then I exist in “timelessness,” transcending time in the present where, “time touches eternity.” *
        

        Until I again enter the madly spinning world where, actually, everything IS happening at once!

*Notes
"So thin a splinter of singing," "Splinter,” Carl Sandburg,  Chicago Poems, 1916.

"The Present is the point at which time touches eternity,” C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis, 1942.
          

                                                                                Sandra Williams    

SUN DANCE (1990)

On one of our visits to the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, my husband, Bob, and I were invited to a Sun Dance. The reservation is home to the Sicangu Lakota Oyate (1). We accompanied Edna Little Elk, known to all as Unci (grandmother), Alice Four Bears and Tate (Unci's young granddaughter). The Sun Dance was to be held for several days in Kyle, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, home to the Oglala Lakota Oyate. The Sun Dance would be held in honor of tribal members, Joe Eagle Elk and Stanley Red Bird (2).  Unci and Alice, as Lakota elders, were the honored guests.

    We drove for two hours on some crude, winding hills and dirt roads. It was a cool and windy day with low, heavy clouds in the sky, even though it was summer.

    When we arrived, we were shown to a tipi with a central fire. The tipi was for the women Sun Dancers who would arrive later. Shortly after, Sam Wounded Head, medicine man, came to welcome us. Then, he handed Unci the Sacred Pipe and spoke to the elders in Lakota. Sitting facing west, they held out their arms to him for a ceremonial sacrificial offering of Lakota tribal blood in which a small bit of flesh was taken and wrapped in a cloth to be placed at the Sacred Tree at the center of the Sun Dance circle. We were then all offered the pipe. 

    Unci asked Bob and me to gather women's sage out on prairie, which we did and returned to the tipi to wait for the dancers. When they arrived, they went into a sweat lodge for purification and then returned to prepare for the Sun Dance. Some wrapped shawls around their shoulders; some adorned themselves with sage wreaths around their wrists or ankles. We all then went to the Sun Dance circle and watched the men and women dancers enter, at the east of the circle. Together the dancers all turned toward each of the four directions. Then the drums and singing began, seeming to me like the heartbeat of the community, as all danced around the Sacred Tree, holding up their hands to it at the mention of Wakan Tanka, the Creator of all that is. It was very moving--this ritual of prayer and celebration--its reverence and meaning.

    At the end of this day's Sun Dance, Unci again received the Sacred Pipe, lit it and passed it around to all who had watched and prayed for the dancers. I will never forget the gift of that day--the honor it was to be there and to have meet many Lakota people on both Rosebud and Pine Ridge Reservations during our visit.

The Badlands  - Pine Ridge

     I could not stop thinking then and, from time to time, even now how Native Americans all over the country had once lived in harmony with nature and had so many ways in there culture to express it, as we had witnessed at that Sun Dance. When the Europeans came, that way of life was doomed, as there was a violation and fragmenting of their lives with the decimation their means of survival--the buffalo; the taking of children to be sent far away to schools to "civilize" them. There was a censoring or abolishment of everything held sacred, including the Lakota language (3). Though many treaties were made, most were to gain more land and to marginaize Native Americans to reservations and many signed treaties were broken to accomplish the goal of "Manifest Destiny," claiming all the land from the east to the west coasts.
    During our visits to South Dakota, we met both White and Native people involved in initiatives to revive and preserve the language and culture of the Lakota people, as is the case across the country for other tribes. We met Ron Goodman (2), a poet and teacher from Virginia, who worked with others in this effort, then teaching at Sinte Gleska, a public tribal land-grant university in the town of Mission on Rosebud. Goodman authored, with Stanley Red Bird, Lakota Star Knowledge, which describes how the heavens were looked to as a source and guide for seasonal, practical and cultural aspects of life for the Lakota.
     Sadly, we also saw the lasting effects on many Lakota--tormented faces in the towns, rife with illness, addiction, crime and poverty. It was heartbreaking! Fortunately, history has left us documents, photos and the words of Native Americans about their way of life--their beliefs and wisdom from the period during and after contact with the Europeans. The faces in these photos seem noble and strong, as their culture once was--aware of their ancestors and the spiritual nature of life with connection to all of creation, represented in daily rituals, and in ceremonies such as the Sun Dance.
    The Lakota have a saying: Mitakuye Oyasin (All My Relatives), or "relations," meaning everything and everyone in creation.

     Chief Seattle, of the Squamish tribe (whose traditional land was in British Columbia), gave a speech before the Medicine Creek Treaty was to be signed 1854. By then, Native American lives and ways had already changed,  and they knew what was still to come.
    His entire speech at: https://suquamish.nsn.us/home/about-us/chief-seattle-speech

Here is an excerpt:
    "....There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory.... And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children’s children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone...."
    Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds...."





Chief Seattle of the Squamish people



* NOTES:
1. The Lakota have seven bands or sub-tribes. The Sicungu of Rosebud and the Oglala of Pine Ridge (where Wounded Knee took place) are two of them. "Oyate" means "people."

2. Stanley Red Bird, was a founder of Sinte Gleska University, and main source for Ron Goodman's book Star Knowledge (availalbe on Amazon). See Sandra's blog on Ron Goodman at: https://cosmicseanotes.blogspot.com/2009/08/my-friend-poet-ron-goodman.html

3. It is worthwhile to note the documented current attempts to erase Native American history and events that took place as if they never happened.  These historic happenings are sometimes interpreted as blame and accusation of White people, which may make them "uncomfortable," or in an effort to imply that there are no misdeeds in American history. However, the documented history not only needs to stand, for that is what  the "history" is, but also as reminders of what can happen when there is intent to wield and hold power over others by any means. We, who live in this age, are not responsible for what happened back then, but, as part of humanity, for truth's sake, we must accept what occurred as reminders that history can and does repeat itself IF we are not aware, vigilant and active in being aware and attempting to ensure it does not.

On The Death My Uncle

A figure short and dark
you melted hearts with your smile
 
Childlike 
You said goodbye to your parents 
Now your children 
in the "solemnest of industries”
grieve and disbelieve
struggling to accept 
your mysterious disappearance 

Within them they will carry you 

While she broods

trying to reconcile
years of frying peppers 
and watching pigeons
with the promise of loneliness
                                
The birds oblivious
no tears to disturb their iridescent coats
roost, take fight, return to their sanctuary
to peck in blessed ignorance about the yard
 
Where once in crimson and lime
the roses of our youth grew the summer long
worm and thorn hidden from our eyes

                                                                                1980

ROME

In Rome
I saw no Coliseum or cats
No hand of God drawn by the maestro
In the Sistine Chapel.

I saw only the cracked ceiling of the stanza
Whereupon I traced out my destiny
With fear and regret

The space was filled by morning
And you—restless
Over your vino or cappuccino
Wondering where to draw a line
to or from me

You drew a circle instead
me on the outside

I drew myself there too

On the ceiling before I left Rome

A lifetime ago

Without seeing the Coliseum or the Sistine Chapel

What is at the top of the Spanish Steps? 

                                                                                (Rome 1972)            

AGAIN

                     And again

               into a dark passage

               all night

               the moon bright

               moves across the sky

               toward morning

               may this dark passage

               like a lunar pilgrimage

               lead us into light,

BEYOND

Beyond

words and images

Beyond

Experience and memory

Beyond

stories we tell ourselves

Beyond

here and now 

Beyond

time and space

THERE is

there I was

there I am

there I will be

WE

We

who create 

 observe, are shown 

hear the call 

may answer in our narrow lives

with boundless imagination

fertile ground of co-creation

We 

sorrowful live 

endure the intractable

the unwrought, the unspoken

all that is asked of us

We

Strive to perfect

what we've brought

what we've received

what we will leave

 

to light the way 

through the labyrinth

of this thin veil

WHAT MATTERS?

I have always been interested in world religions, what they teach and what is essential, common tenets across the spectrum. Of course, everyone must find his/her own way in faith and matters of spirituality (or not). I am not a Buddhist, nor am I evangelizing for Buddhism; however, if practiced, there is of much value in its Noble Eightfold Path--a more conscious way of living, and it supports other religious faiths, if one so chooses.

    The Eightfold Path was thought to be revealed in the first sermon of the founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama (563 to 483 B.C), known as the Buddha. He achieved enlightenment after being tempted three times while meditating for 49 days under a Bodhi tree, during.  Enlightement, put simply, is a realization of the true nature of reality, imparting both wisom and compassion. He did not claim to be a god, and is not considered such to his followers. Buddha was a teacher who shared his experience and insights and a way to achieve enlightenment.

    For me, the eight tenets of this path embody ideals to aspire to in order to be more mindful of how we live and how we relate to other human beings. The following is a paraphrased/simplified description of each. *

1. Right Understanding: The realization of the true nature of reality, embodied in the Four Noble Truths: The truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering.
2. Right Resolve: Cultivates wholesome and ethical intentions, including renouncing harmful or violent actions, developing goodwill and compassion toward all beings, and non-attachment.
3. Right Speech: Being aware of what, how and why you are apeaking, and to whom. Abstaining from lying, divisive speech, abusive speech, and idle chatter, causing discord or harm through your speech.
4. Right Action (Conduct): Causing no injury, bodily or otherwise harm to others, not taking what is not given, no excessive material desires. It aims to promote peaceful, honorable, and moral conduct.
5. Right Livelihood: Earning a living that is ethical and doesn't harm others or oneself, engaging in compassionate activities to make a living in a way that creates happiness, wisdom, and well-being, while relieving suffering.
6. Right Effort: Guarding the “sense-doors,” restraint of the sense faculties to rid oneself of unwholesome thoughts, words and actions, and, ultimately, to perfect a good and wholesome state of being.
7. Right Mindfulness: Guarding/watching over the mind for thoughts that take over or dominate. The weaker they become, the stronger wholesome states of mind become. Avoid distractions or being absent minded, rather being conscious of what one is thinking, saying and doing.
8. Right Concentration: The centering of consciousness, evenly and rightly on a single object (meditative state).
         * (https://en.winkipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path#)

    These are questions I had when I first looked into the Eightfold Path:
1. What would it mean to be aware of and follow each one of these tenets, for me and for others? 

2. What would it mean for me and for others if we do not follow them? 

These, and other questions may be pondered from time to time to “check in” to see if one is being true to these ideals. So that all this isn’t too abstract, I share an example of checking in for Right Speech, which to me implies written communication as well as spoken.

• What is the purpose of my speaking?
• Do I need to say everything I am thinking? (usually not)
• Is it necessary or helpful that I speak it.
• Will its purpose be understood?
• Am I too impulsive in what, how and why I am communicating?
• How can I speak in the most essential, concise and clear way devoid of small talk, gossip, digressing, or rambling?
• Is there an element in my communication of “one-upmanship,”or a subtle unhelpful, sarcastic tone?
• Am I speaking just to prove I am right about something, even if it is factual/true, rather noting when it is subjective/opion or unproven.

        These questions may seem excessive or obsessive; however, for one following Buddhism, they are no different from other ways people attempt to adhere to their faiths. Altough I have been drawn to the Eightfold Path, see its value and attempt to follow the the ideals of the eightfold path, no doubt, I fall short and “forget to remember” to regularly check in, but there is always “try and try again!”

        Buddhists may have much to say about my calling the Eightfold Path “ideals” or cherry-picking this aspect of Buddhism, as there is a much greater understanding to be grasped and followed if one were to consider oneself a Buddhist, though the Eightfold Path is central to any of its branches, and seems like common sense for every day life, or a lifetime, no matter if one has a spiritual path or not. 

To me, it is what matters.

Handpainted Tongka by Tibetan refugee