That time of year thou mayest in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon thouse boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 73
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Words of Rumi:
There is one thing in this world you must never forget to do. If you forget everything else and not this, there's nothing to worry about, but if you remember everything else and forget this, then you will have done nothing in your life.
It's as if a king has sent you to some country to do a task, and you perform a hundred other services, but not the one he sent you to do. So human beings come to this world to do particular work. That work is the purpose, and each is specific to the person. If you don't do it, it's as though a priceless Indian sword were used to slice rotten meat. It's a golden bowl being used to cook turnips, when one filing from the bowl could buy a hundred suitable pots. It's like a knife of the finest tempering nailed into a wall to hang things on.
You say, "But look, I'm using it. It's not lying idle." Do you hear how ridiculous that sounds? For a penny an iron nail could be bought. You say, "but I spend my energies on lofty projects. I study philosophy and jurisprudence, logic, astronomy, and medicine." But consider why you do those things. They are all branches of yourself and your impressiveness.
Remember the deep root of your being, the presence of your lord. Give yourself to the one who already owns your breath and your moments. If you don't, you'll be like the man who takes a ceremonial dagger and hammers it into a post for a peg to hold his dipper gourd. You'll be wasting valuable keenness and forgetting your dignity and purpose.
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"Ikiru is a cinematic expression of modern existentialist thought. It consists of a restrained affirmation within the context of a giant negation. What it says in starkly lucid terms is that 'life' is meangless when everything is said and done; at the same time, one man's life can acquire meaning when he undertakes to perform some task that to him is meaningful. What everyone else thinks about that man's life is utterly beside the point, even ludicrous. The meaning of his life is what he commits the meaning of his life to be. There is nothing else."
-Richard Brown on Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru
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I had one of my best yoga classes ever today. I went to the new studio, and although I did not go to class with the male teacher yet, I assume this class was in the same style. It was a slow class - probably slower than I would want in my regular practice, but that gave me time to focus. the entire class included small stretches designed to work up to trikonasana. It's a beautiful posture. It's a hip opener, a spine lengthener, a twisting motion. In most yoga classes, I am pushing harder into the stretch to get maximum benefit (or something...) Everything was so slow in this class: we took such time to focus and relax into postures that I had a large release in my lower back when leaving class. This simply goes to show how all our actions are energetic. Somehow when I stretch harder and deeper, without the requisite focus, breath, and forgiveness, I loosen my muscles, but it's not the same. In reference to this type of yoga, I have heard twice now: Do no violence (even towards the self). What I was doing in all that slow time before the final posture was finding my center - slowly identifying and communicating with it. Once that is done, I am ready for the pose. But before, it's all superficial movement.
I see this phenomenon in the dance as well. We move, we explode, but in all this time, we have not connected with our center of movement. If we can't even take a simple step, how can we accomplish something more complicated? It can be a catch-22, because following this train of logic, how could we ever begin to dance? There are naturally differing schools of thought on this subject. I read once about a samurai school that made you practice nothing but the most basic strike for three straight years in order to gain entrance into the school. Only upon accomplishing this, without any missed days, was one ready. I think there's another way. We can certainly dance and live and search for our center along the way. The problem, however, seems to be that we forget our search in our desire to get to the living or dancing or fighting. We lose our focus, and suddenly we are left with lots of movement - lots of noise, but where is the essence? Then we look around and wonder how we have been surpassed by those we used to think little of.
The essence of action is intention. But what intention? We live to eat and work. What can we possibly intend to do? I can't answer this, but it certainly has to do with the relation between life and death. I hear of people who really live their lives once diagnosed with terminal cancer or something. It's a common theme. What have these people realized? It seems to be the fragility of life. Once we understand this in our bones, something changes. What is that? How do we live differently when we know our death is stalking us?
Joseph Campbell notes that the hero must leave the path of the known. Dante begins his journey lost in a dark wood. It seems to me that to live, we must strike out on our own. We must find our "particular work" Rumi speaks of. We must leave behind the warnings of those who have never walked our path. Life is, in essence, newness. This newness is paradoxically the oldest thing in the world. For this reason, every story, opinion, and situation can shed light on our our predicaments, even if they can never speak to particulars. It's a big mystery and no mystery at all.
I'm going to figure it out. Every day I get closer. I can feel it. I'm doing the only thing I know how, and that must be the right thing. Everyone's got some path, and this is mine.
