Because mountains are high and broad, the way of riding the clouds is always reached in the mountains; the inconceivable power of soaring in the wind comes freely from the mountains” (Eihei Dogen – Mountains and Waters Sutra)
After the solitude of the early morning on Sunday, sitting on the doorstep observing the neighbour’s garden came a companionable walk in the Lake District. There must have been about 15 sangha members and friends striding up towards this minor mountain chatting as we went. Not to the top!
It was a lovely morning. The sun shining with not a hint of a threat of rain and it remained that way for our eight mile hike. Some fairly vertical sections but nothing that required a scramble or offering much in the way of exposure. (Meaning no need to hang onto rocks for dear life, lifting and placing feet while keeping impermanence in mind!)
At a certain point there was a choice to make a side trip to stand atop the hill (Mellbreak). I’m not that interesting to gain the tops of mountains so I reclined on the grass and enjoyed the view from where I was. The others came back eventually and in the dim distance I heard, Do you think we should wake up Rev. Mugo? It’s sooo relaxing in the mountains. We lunched and walked onwards.
With bows of thanks to Jenny who’s 60th birthday we celebrated on returning to the valley floor. Splendid cake, with strawberries and cream and good company. Jenny has been leading Green Mountains Walkers from its inception. Now the baton has been passed on to another able leader.
Sitting on the doorstep early morning.The flowers in the neighbour’s garden. Pansies and others. Seeing them it was if they were beheld for the first time. By anybody. Ever.The school janitor in shorts collects his Sunday paper and a lone cyclist whizzes by. Rainbow colours.
For me the meaning of solitude is not the absence of other. And yet being physically alone; the empty hill the other evening or sauntering in a woodland brings with it a reminder. A reminder that everything IS being beheld for the first time. Including oneself. I’m thinking Solitude passes through. Not to be lingered in over long.
Earlier in the week I spent time with my American second cousin who was visiting England for the first time. What a pleasure it was to see and appreciate England through her wide open and receptive eyes and heart. It didn’t take long before I was as excited as she was about sheep and cows, stone walls and old buildings built of stone! Really, England is amazing at any time of the year and thank goodness the weather held. We ‘tooled’ around (as she put it) narrow lanes of Lancashire, she was especially enthralled by the vegetation being so lush and so close to the roadside.
We did the statutory garden tour but with a difference. Levens Hall has a historic Topiary and quite unlike anything I’ve ever encountered anywhere. This area of the gardens had us both disoriented and longing for some order and symmetry. It really was the strange experience to be walking amongst this disjointed collection of ‘bush art’.
Street in Lancaster
Levens Hall Topiary Gardens
Bush bows to bush!
I’m left with a sense of gratitude for our time together filled with family stories spanning several generations. In skilled hands it could make a best seller! The pain and sufferings (and joy and fun too) were real enough however in the telling something has dissolved. Perhaps that’s due to a deeper appreciation and acceptance of what they are. Just stories which have no substance, much like air.
The photograph of the Lancaster street seen anew is for Jessica and her daughter. Thank you for opening my eyes to what is commonplace and still magnificent in England. And for welcoming me into your life and history.
For one to be able to live one must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.
Leo Tolstoy Walking down a green lane with the birds singing and wild flowers in abundance. However… However heavenly life is there lurks the potential for the bottom to drop out of the bucket. Here is how it was for Leo Tolstoy when he had everything, and had everything to live for.
Shortly after turning fifty, Leo Tolstoy succumbed to a profound spiritual crisis. With his greatest works behind him, he found his sense of purpose dwindling as his celebrity and public acclaim billowed, sinking into a state of deep depression and melancholia despite having a large estate, good health for his age, a wife who had born him fourteen children, and the promise of eternal literary fame. On the brink of suicide, he made one last grasp at light amidst the darkness of his existence, turning to the world’s great religious and philosophical traditions for answers to the age-old question regarding the meaning of life. In 1879, a decade after War and Peace and two years after Anna Karenina, and a decade before he set out to synthesize these philosophical findings in his Calendar of Wisdom, Tolstoy channeled the existential catastrophe of his inner life in A Confession – an autobiographical memoir of extraordinary candor and emotional intensity, which also gave us Tolstoy’s prescient meditation on money, fame, and writing for the wrong reasons.
