“How can you reject Samsara? Where will you go? This is Nirvana itself.” – H. W. L. Papaji
Life and meaning. It goes two ways, either I find something in life that generates meaning, some person, place, or thing I decide is some sort of answer to questions that only humans need answered. Who am I? What’s the meaning to all of this? Am I eternal? Is there a greater intelligence out there running things? What is this all about anyway?
Or I can pay attention. And see the meaning as it unfolds.
I walk very early, usually at breaking dawn or before. But yesterday I was wobbling down the street in full light, the sun was bright and shining. Ahead were houses bordering on a forest, and from said forest, a large hawk appeared and started making lazy circles in the sky. I stopped and raised my hand to block the sun in order to focus on the scene.
The hawk slowly circled towards me as I stood in the street. Banking right and then left in gentle swoops, a controlled glide, and she/he must have noticed me standing there, and wanted to check me out. In a minute the hawk was directly overhead circling from fifty feet, slowing moving it’s head to examine me carefully. The sky was that intense electric blue, with bits of cottonwood drifting like a sparse snow intensified by the light. The Hawk’s face articulated in the sunlight, each feather, the brown and creamy colors, the way the head kept swiveling with me as the only subject. Locking eyes, a connection. The entire scene creating a memory thread, one I hope stays for a while.
Hello Human. Hello Hawk.
Like a Kurosawa movie. Only Better. Samsara is Nirvana. It’s not a saying, it’s a fact.
Everyday life, when seen in attention, is Nirvana. As I move away from the big dramatic events of the day, see that all my exquisite whining about myself has never actually resolved anything, and turn towards what’s directly unfolding in life, ordinary miracles rise. It’s like taking a drop of water from a pond that doesn’t look the least bit interesting and magnifying it. Suddenly what was a boring drop of water from a pond is teeming with life, and life’s interactions.
We all live in this exquisite intense soup. I am in awe of the sun, I am in awe of a dragonfly. Great arcing circles and swirls of things colliding and weaving, a life unfolding. None of this unfolding was ever about me at all. Except my part, my part of the unfolding is about me, no matter what anyone says. I am. And I will be until I’m not. And I hope I can take some moments everyday and see the small things, the real miracles. Why? So I don’t get lost in me.
To touch and hold with heart and brain, for a magic moment, the unfolding itself. Samsara, everyday existence, doesn’t change anymore than Nirvana can change. Because, these are two labels, FOR THE SAME EXPERIENCE. Is the flat tire nirvana? Is needing to do something I don’t want to do, nirvana? Is tripping and falling nirvana?
I find it fascinating that everything could be, depending on my view. My only question, is my view a choice? Or is it just the experience experienced? More will be revealed.
Bryan Wagner