an ode to the rhythm of life

Everything has rhythm. The moon hs rhythm, the sun, the planets circling the sun all following their own cycle. The Universe is pulsing with endless and multidemensional polyrythms. 

And we too, a profound expression of all of this, also have our own rhythms. Our heart beat, sleeping and waking, the movement of walking, our daily routines - all are rhythm.

And yet somehow human beings have become so accustomed to the tick, tick, tick of time. The clock telling us when it's time to wake up, when it's time to eat, go to work, have lunch. It's time to pay our bills, pay our taxes, time to vote. We pay for time, get paid for time, have to put in leave in order to make use of the time that is granted to us by a higher power. There's time for tv, time for bed, time to retire. How much time do we have left until we die..

And yet underneath it all is the gentle, constant, rhythm. Our hearts beating, and our chest rising and falling with each breath, like the tides of the ocean dancing to the rhythm of the moon. 

Perhaps our survival, our response to this 'global crisis' is not so much about bail-outs, reducing carbon emissions, working harder, and all of the so-called solutions we come up with to fix a problem that we really don't fully understand.

Perhaps it's more about learning to listen again, learning to surf, learning to dance, learning to drum like our ancestors did - moving, breathing and making love to the rhythm of life.

The shapes that shape us

Why do we do what we do?
Why do we think what we think?
Is there some deeper meaning to it all,
or are these simply patterns repeating themselves
and we do and think these things because that is what we do and think?

Why do we ask why?
How does this work, this feedback loop that allows awareness to be aware of awareness?

And if my body is constantly changing,
and the me I see is not the same me that I saw the day before
What is the pattern that keeps it all together..
Like the form of a whirlpool or the shape of a tree or a river.

Is it some mysterious morphic resonance?
or is it the future, pulling the present into shape
and does this pattern continue once this body has gone?

Perhaps we already know the answers
But haven't yet invented the words..

Kung Fu

Kungfu.

Hard work over time to accomplish skill.

A painter can have Kungfu.
Or the butcher who cuts meat every day with such skill...his knife never touches bone.

Learn the form, but seek the formless.
Hear the soundless.
Learn it all, then forget it all.
Learn The Way, then find your own way.

The musician can have Kungfu.
Or the poet who paints pictures with words and makes emperors weep.
This, too, is Kungfu.

But do not name it, my friend, for it is like water.
Nothing is softer than water...yet it can overcome rock.
It does not fight.
It flows around the opponent.

Formless, nameles...the true master dwells within.
Only you can free him.

(from "The Forbidden Kingdom")

Waking up to the dream

constantly looking out at the world
feeling alone in myself
and yet there are many voices
the conversations with the past and the future
sometimes i feel like the king of the world
and then sometimes that i don't exist
perhaps both are true
and that this dream is all a dream
and so slowly there is this awakening
not so much from the dream,
but to the realisation that we are the dreamer

In search of nothing

Nothing..
No thing
Impossible to conceptualize
Because this very act is creation
Giving thingness to that which is not this or that.
Nothing..
No thing
That which contains the possibility of all things
Out of which all of this or that is born
Emptiness, Darkness
Pure raw potential out of which universes explode.
And this is not there or here or within or beyond..
Timelessness, Spacelessness, Thinglessness,
No thing nessss

The dance between form and emptiness

The essence of rhythm is movement. If you stop and say 'this is it' you've lost it. There is no way that rhythm can be contained, no specific point in time in which it exists. It's a constant movement and it always exists in relation to what has gone before and where it is going.

Rhythm is like a river. It continuously flows. You can look at it and say "That is a river", but no part of the river can be said to be the river, and at no time is the river ever the same, other than in concept. It’s ‘is-ness’ exists in the mind alone.

This experience of life that seems to be a constant 'thing' is the same. It is a rhythm of energy, experience, information flowing and creating the form which is perceived as 'me' or 'you', but it is no different from a river, or a cloud, or a piece of music or the form of a whirlwind that exists, but at the same time has no inherent existence in and of itself.

It's all a dance..

Step by step

I went walking with my family in the mountains today. On one of the uphills my daughter was getting a little tired. I tried to teach her one of the things I do when I'm walking uphill and start to feel tired. I make my steps shorter and get into a rhythm. That way I forget about the tiredness and my walking becomes a lot easier.
What she immediately tried to do was copy my steps, but her legs are a lot shorter. The thing is, I can teach her how to find a rhythm, I can teach her that this will make it easier, but she is the one who needed to find a rhythm that worked for her. My rhythm just wouldn't do.