A beautiful zen moment this morning. Looked at the Sun rising behind the cemetery. Yes, the Sun rises for the Dead too.
Every moment - life and death are playing and dancing together.
Usually I walk past this cemetery and never paid much attention. But today I stopped. Looked at the rays of the Sun piercing through the tree branches. How each blade of grass was shining vibrant with life. An earthworm lay helpless nearby trying to roll on the pavement concrete. I picked it up with a small stick and put it back to earth. An insect was trying to cross the pavement. All are busy with their lives.
A few dead bodies, but millions of new lives thriving under this ground.
Long time back I head read the story The Meek One by Dostoyevskey. Now I have forgotten what the story was about, but something I read is stuck in my mind:
Emptiness! Oh nature! People are alone on this planet, that’s the trouble ... They say the Sun gives life to the Universe. But the Sun rises and - look - isn’t it dead? Just solitary people and all about - silence. That’s the kind of world we live in.But this morning this quietness and nature was amazing. The Sun was life-force, not dead.
The life force that is powering this blade of grass, the insect, the earthworm - is also powering me. It is the same life force. And there is not much difference in all of us. We are all connected with this invisible thread.
Down the way Jasmine flowers bloomed showering me with its wonderful smell. I was lost in the days that had gone, in my old home thousands of miles away - where the Jasmine flowers smelled exactly the same.
A thought flashed. Where will all of us be in a hundred years? Yes, just a hundred years from today. That lady in the red shining car. The man jogging on the other side of street. These insects and worms. This green grass. And me the walker and the witness of this all happening right now - this moment. Everything will have gone. Disappeared into the black hole we call time.
Buddha was meditating and a leaf fell. He took it. Looked at it and said,
We do not die and we are are not born. We just appear and disappear. The whole of the Universe is in this leaf.I have often thought about this. The ego inside us says: I - I - I. I exist. I am special. Things should be different for me. But how special are we compared to that earthworm, or that insect? Is our existence independent? It is not. Without Sun, without this earth, without water - there is no independent existence of anything at all. Then, where is this I that something inside desperately clings on to. Looking deeper, we understand nothing exists at all. You try to peel the onion trying to find the I. In the end, there is nothing - you are left with nothing, nothing more to peel. Vast emptiness remains. A phenomena, a wave - that appeared and then disappears.
A bubble appears in a pond for a few seconds, then disappears. A second for the bubble is the lifetime. How long can we live? 60, 70 or 90 years? For the Universe, where time and space is infinite, what is our lifetime? It's all the same. All we are is just a click in time and space. We appeared and then we disappear. This moment exists now, but the next moment it will just be a memory. Only this moment has brought us all together. I walked on and the mind still kept wondering about the subtle difference between "birth" and "appearance", "death" and "disappearance". Nothing was born, and nothing will die. I am the Universe. And the Universe is me. The thought continued. Mind tried to understand, knowing the Truth is beyond this thought and beyond all understanding.
Somewhere along the way home, Tagore also jumped into my mind.
The butterfly counts not months but moments,
and has time enough.
Time is a wealth of change,
but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.
Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time,
like dew on the tip of a leaf