I'm "growing up", because apparently it's the thing to do ;)
As children bring their broken toys, with tears, for us to mend;
I brought my broken dreams to God because he was my friend.
But then instead of leaving him, in peace, to work alone,
I hung around and tried to help with ways that were my own.
At last, I snatched them back and cried, “How could you be so slow?”
“My child,” He said, “What could I do? You never did let go….”
…found in an old notebook; unattributed but, sadly, not mine.
This isn’t elegant, or eloquent or profound. It’s just a little though I had while catching up on my RSS.
Some posts on engaged Buddhism, a little from “The Social Business Blog”, Doug Richard’s “The Naked Business”.. and then a thought. What would a Buddhist business look like?
Could my business be a Buddhist business? how would that manifest?
How many kinds of businesses could run entirely on dāna. Not charities, I don’t think the flow of money or intention would be the same, but commercial entities with variable fees set by the customer based on worth… kind of Gordon Ramsay-eque (but perhaps with more mindful speech). Ethical, honest, mindful entities.
..thoughts,
Buddhist businesses,
..a penny for them. or whatever you think they’re worth.
Today is a bad day.
Today I feel grotesque, lethargic, incompetent and unworthy.
Today I do not want to engage.
Today, is one of those days that, if I’d have had this day, these feelings, 18 months ago; I would have stayed under the duvet under self-imposed stasis. At best, hiding; counting down the hours till the next day, a new day drawn like a card from a freshly shuffled pack. Different luck. Utterly reactionary.
But it isn’t 18 months ago.
It’s today.
And today I have obligations.
Simple things, but particularly illustrative. I need to go to the post office and send HMRC some documentation pertaining to the business that I run. I need to go to the polling station and vote. I need to go put a cheque into the bank. I need to get a bus across town and go see the therapist. I need to call a friend and commit or cancel our plans..
These things.. seem insurmountable.
But today is not the same today as yesterday. These days i make the insurmountable happen. I’d say it gets easier, and i guess it does, until some days, like today, when i catch myself edging towards the duvet..
“In that first
hardly noticed moment
in which you wake,
coming back to this life
from the other more secret,
moveable and frighteningly
honest world where everything began,
there is a small opening
into the new day
which closes the moment
you begin your plans.
What you can plan
is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly
will make plans enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.
To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.
To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.
You are not a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night than the one
from which you have just emerged….”
— David Whyte, from What to Remember When Waking
“People don’t want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.” – Chuck Palahniuk
…. says it all.
for now.
Is it honorable to feel pain?
I know, big question for an opening.
Somehow, though, I don’t feel like the preamble..
Not now, not tonight.
Is there a reward for coming home to an empty flat?
Sitting. Hurting. Calling no one, escaping nowhere..
no tv, no fantasy, no novel.. no sex, no drugs, no food.
Just alone. Just pain.
Is there a truth here? Is this all of us? All humanity?
Am I experiencing all it is to be truly human?
Am I really.. (you say I am).. but am I really, really, more broken than most?
Or just more aware?
or neither?
(or delusional.. or wanting..)
I find no peace here, no honesty.
No joy or salvation in the truth. Just pain.
Hence the question..
Is it honorable to feel pain?
*Socrates
My dreams are yellow roses on the longest of stems; rooted to people and places, grown in disparate memories, and moments in time.
I grasp tightly at the bouquet, welcoming to my chest their robust beauty.
The heads of the blooms crush against each other, petals folding and jostling for space under my grip.
I run my fingers over the tapering stem as far as my reach will allow. And where tactile contact ends, my gaze resumes. I follow the trail to the edge of my horizon.
Ever fearful that one day I will see signs of decay and know that out there, somewhere, that stem has been uprooted.
Ever fearful that today may be that day’s eve; the day of the uprooting..
And the demise is set in motion and travelling ever closer.
And I, unaware.
Ever fearful that I never made clear what was to become of the seeds I left entrusted. To those nurturing the roots, how they and I are still connected somehow.
And of those I never told. Those whom unwittingly offered such fertile ground for my imaginings, I carelessly dropped one or two, curious, to see if they took.
Diligent horticulturalists and unsuspecting gardeners, alike.
Who could have known how I would rely upon you now?
If you believe humanity is good
If you believe we creatures are truly intelligent
If you believe in the science of equilibrium, dharma, karma
You’d care less about the rules and more about your conscience.
2010 rolled into the station, predictably on time but blowing a whistle and puffing a little more steam than I recalled anticipating. Amidst the fog, I stumbled into a content, wryly amused and empowered cabin; where ‘wrong decisions’ that ‘feel right’ become acceptable, and ‘right decisions’ that ‘feel wrong’, condemnable.
I committed mental treason,
a coup on Western society,
I have stolen back the element of choice.
We fool ourselves with sweeping claims that humanity is in tune with one another. Taking the life of another human being is wrong, equality is right; a Benetton advert of creeds and colours holding hands and embracing a helix of seemingly universal edicts isn’t human experience condensed. That isn’t what we know hour by hour, each day, each year.
We wonder whether to buy the Big Issue, whether to eat that doughnut, whether to kiss them again now we noticed the glint of a wedding ring. Do we stand up for the institution, indemnify ourselves as it wasn’t our finger bearing the band or pretend, even to ourselves, we hadn’t noticed?
In my 2010, the criteria for good and bad are measured against a level of genuine, intrinsic guilt that arises resulting from an action, not societal shame.
And there is a difference.
Such a difference.
The rules protect the system.
My conscience protects my humanity.
I know to whom I bow.
Tomorrow’s world will what it wills;
that it can bend to me,
or can’t,
or my will, to it.
As long as this eases, ask who will keep score
of who lowered who’s shackles first
and who for?
Perhaps, this time, the words will come.
Not those words, but those words, the right words, for him.
And in hearing, he’ll listen; and in listening, he’ll see
the ‘tear here’ lines, ‘fold here’ marks, dot-dashed over me.
But for now we see through a glass, darkly ... 