Difficulties as blessings in disguise

Sometimes it is a time of hunger. Sacrifice. Trying to fulfil ones dreams can come at a high cost yet as I sit here by the river, in a town called Siem Reap in Cambodia, stomach growling and cramping up like a second heart, gasping for nutriments, I let the river and its wisdom fulfil my emptiness.

It is me who decided a little while ago to continue my life as a rambling wanderer in S-E Asia, as a freebird looking for her own song, while having no resources to really provide for that life. It is I who put the fate of these months in the hand of Life, who surrendered to its will. Is my faith now crumbling because of the needs of my stomach? I suspect an uglier reason yet.

I have known hunger before, there have been times in my life when I've survived on a few pieces of bread a day, when I have walked huge distances in a strange city, an illegal immigrant no less, begging for a job, exhausted, famished, and with blistered feet. Once I started to do well I lost something valuable I had gained during that difficult period- humility. The reason I suffer now is pride and being used to a life of luxury, this is the truth of the Now. I have never held back any expenses while I travel, I have taken the most out of every adventure. No more. It is the crumbling of my hedonistic soul I hear now much more than that of my stomach.

The river continues to speak.

I've always nodded sympathetically when the Cambodian people have told me of the reasons they would love to leave their homeland, how hard life can be here, how they barely survive. I've always told them that I understand. How easy it is to say that yet how many of the tourists who can afford the greatest luxury of all- travel, really do understand? I am lucky enough to begin to understand now.

The river briefly spurts as it runs over a rock at the same time that my stomach throws another tantrum. Doesn't the river always continue to flow regardless of any obstacles on its path? If a river had the ability to think would it consider any of the changes in its path an obstacle at all? Perhaps it would cherish all that comes its way as companions on its lonely path? Don't we humans also prefer a curving scenic route, amid mountains or valleys, to a long straight path with no variety?

I am stranded on a rocky surface perhaps for the moment yet I must remember that I am not treading on my dreams as Yeats once feared. Quite the opposite, these "sufferings" are the creation of my dreams, they flow out of the same pen which writes its ecstasies. It is me, yes me, who chose the life of following dreams above life-lessness.

I say goodbye to the river now, bow down to it with a grateful whisper, and find my usual street-side stall to eat my meal of the day. The dish of fried rice with vegetables is before me now and I notice a slight tremor in my hand as I lift the chopsticks. The gratitude! My stomach is filled after a few mouthfuls but I keep on eating till the plate is sparkling clean, despite the nausea that comes with the effort.

I am grateful for the new appreciation for my temporary home-land, for all that it suffers and for all the measly bits it produces with the sweat and toil of its inhabitants. Even more than that I have a renewed appreciation for another home that I inhabit temporarily- my body. And last but not least I am grateful for a rebirth of my faith in Life and Dreams. We may not understand the blessings of the more hard stretches of time, but everything is always for our own growth and thus happiness.

Death to nostalgia

Nostalgia...

Spinning our hearts backwards towards a memory of some long-lost lover, what is it that we long and look for? A revelation? Resurrection? Resolve? Remedy for a present emptiness?

And then why stop at one, lets unwind that whole damned yarn... So many lovers. An army of "the lost ones". Let them all march down to the sound of trumpets blasting songs of love and death.

I sometimes wonder how one measly life-time is able to hold hundreds of lives of love... It is born!! It dies. It is born!!! It dies. Something remains from each and something dissolves into all.

The beautifully decorated invite that says "We are pleased to invite you to a ghostly meandering through dream-scapes and nightmare-scapes"... This way and other... Reading imaginary books in a burnt-down library... Trying to suck out the juice from a years old crumpled carton... Ah the luscious lingering scent of the lost ones! (A sweet-tooth like myself relishing bitterness thus?)

The useless rambling on deaf ears... (For I am ALIVE!!)

So all of you lost ones-

Leave.

And if you can't or won't- it's all right..

For I am gone.

"Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"

It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe
If you don't know by now
An’ it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe
It will never do somehow
When your rooster crows at the break of dawn
Look out your window and I’ll be gone
You’re the reason I’m trav’lin’ on
Don’t think twice, it’s all right

It ain’t no use in turnin’ on your light, babe
That light I never knowed
An’ it ain’t no use in turnin’ on your light, babe
I’m on the dark side of the road
Still I wish there was somethin’ you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay
We never did too much talkin’ anyway
So don’t think twice, it’s all right

It ain’t no use in callin’ out my name, gal
Like you never done before
It ain’t no use in callin’ out my name, gal
I can’t hear you anymore
I’m a-thinkin’ and a-wond’rin’ all the way down the road
I once loved a woman, a child I’m told
I give her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

So long honey bee
Where I’m bound, I can’t tell
But goodbye’s too good a word, gal
So I’ll just say fare thee well
I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

"And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act." Joseph Campbell

And then will come the morning. It always does. Not a pretend morning, those come plenty as well. Those mere wanna-be's, shameless con-artists half-filling your consciousness with fake light, those heart-of-darkness-mornings when you wake with eyes full of tears, when you wake to a wish to just sleep, sleep and keep on sleeping. No. A real morning. How shocking is a real morning after a real bout of the real night.

It was a long night. Yet not nearly as drawn-out as it might have been. I know that the reason for that is the pact I made with the night-time and with suffering long ago. When the nights do come, as they do, as they will, I offer them no war, I greet them with an understanding of non-resistance. And they in turn burn in me and as me with a fast powerful transforming flame. Everything in life has its place and reason. When it's time to grieve then who are you to argue. Resistance is not only futile, it is ignorant. So when the demons come, why not face them head on with no fear. No. I'll go further than that- why not dance with them! Their bared-up teeth to you can either be a terrifying growl or a grin.

A well-groomed girl wearing a red silk dress trying out all the porches in the slums for size and deciding to take a nap on the rat-filled street in the end. Sad? No- she enjoyed the experience. Her suitor for the night, finally frustrated by her friendly, sardonic, easy-going, happy, sad, approachable, unapproachable, funny, obstinate behavior, tearing up the roses that he bought her and sprinkling the torn-up petals and thorns on her smiling tear-filled face on the pavement. Ridiculously beautiful- at least thats how she saw it.

The truth is never ugly. Feeling buried under the earth of sadness will unavoidably lead one back up to the stars and the sun and the beauty and the joy. And from my experience- it is perfectly alright when offered no resistance. There is the right time and a reason for everything. For grieving, for coming out of grievance, for the night and for the morning.

Sunlight creeping in through the dusty old granny-curtains of my rented room in down-town Phnom Penh, with roses and the words "Love forever" printed on them. I stretch my whole body like a cat, and for a moment have the strange feeling that I actually am a cat, purring to the pleasure of the wonderful warm rays of sun on my naked body and to the thought of a whole new exciting day in front of me with nothing to do but run around looking for adventure. Lying there under the sun and feeling it shaking up my heart slowly, surely, savoring each waking shiver of a newly strung chord. It is the stretch of a good rest. No- it wasn't a bad dream. It was merely the night.

The good-bye

The slum-like streets of downtown Phnom Penh. Smoking a cigarette at a streetside cafe and watching life unfold and miraculously keep on moving while my own heart has stopped dead on the tracks. How many people do I myself pass on the street every day without knowing that their hearts are weeping black holes longing to be blasted into oblivion?? YOU. Eyes that don't see, ears that only hear the genuine madness, beauty, truth and love of life turned into conventional greetings and arbitrary words. YOUR EYES. YOUR PLAYFUL FLIRTY EYES, TENDER LOVING EYES, RED-RIMMED EYES READY TO BURST INTO TEARS, COLD AVOIDING EYES. And yet why is it that when there is suffering in my own small existence then I feel so strongly the connection to all those strange and apparently distant faces and voices. I know that they suffer too. DID YOU SUFFER? A plump local hooker crossing the street, dressed up to the nines in the afternoon, throwing one shimmering high heel in front of the other in a cocky careless desperate way. We are all on the same boat. Am I not blocking the sound of an argument between a couple in the next table at the moment because I want to be alone with the struggle of words and emotions in my own head. So we all must find our own salvation and pretend to be alone and separate. Life never ceases to pierce and amuse me with its unrelenting contradictions and hilarious wicked irony. The Garden of Eden is once again filled with only dead roses. My instinct is to harrow my friends for sympathy but when it comes down to it then I know that the only sympathy that I need is the one for myself. For we are our own wrathful Gods of Vengeance, judging, always judging our actions and their concequences as mistakes, instead of forgiving and recognizing the true gift of any painful situation- that of a possibility for personal growth. YOU. ALWAYS YOU. IN EVERY SIMILAR SHAPE OF A BODY, FAMILIAR MOVEMENT, SLANT OF THE EYES, CURVING OF MOUTH. I hear a ringing in my ears, a tolling for mercy and for death. I put out my cigarette in an old beer-can torn in half, dispensed to me by the ever-smiling waitress and cool my alcohol-filled stomach with a tasty coconut shake. Yes- it is tasty, there is still an ounce of flavour left in the world and this simple joy amazes me for a while. But this passes quickly and once again I am THERE. THERE IN THE LONG HALL-WAY. YOU FAR AWAY IN THE OTHER END WATCHING ME WITH MY PACKED UP SUIT-CASES, BOTH OF OUR FEET AS IF GLUED TO THE FLOOR. STARING IN AN ETERNAL MOMENT AT EACH OTHER AND THE UNCROSSABLE DISTANCE BETWEEN US. WAS IT NOT ONLY A FEW DAYS AGO WHEN I RAN INTO YOUR ARMS AND COVERED YOU WITH KISSES? I AM LONGING, LONGING TO BE RELEASED FROM THE CHAIN THAT HOLDS ME ON THIS SPOT. I FEEL YOUR CALL WITH EVERY FIBRE OF MY BEING, THOUGH I KNOW THAT YOUR FACE SHOWS NO EMOTION AT ALL RIGHT NOW, YOUR FACE, THERE IN THE DISTANCE, THERE RIGHT INSIDE MY SWIRLING CAROUSEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS. YOU TURN. AND I WATCH YOU LEAVE. SO YOU WERE THE FIRST TO BREAK FREE. AS FOR ME... Yes- love is pain. And pain is also love though we may not see it at the time. Now that another obsession with immortality and illusion of permanence has run its normal course into being torn apart, I am once again in the peace and wholeness that is the Void. And even though I am there most of the times with your ghost following me everywhere, I let it be. I let you be there and the pain, and the pain- I let that be there too. It will pass, as everything else does. Suddenly I feel nothing but gratitude for all the love and pain that I have been blessed with in my life and I smile. Somewhere a bird is singing.

Hille and Lii's Travel Page

http://lilleke80.blogspot.com/

My travel blog from S-E Asia

Over-coming fear

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Dogfish - Mary Oliver

Dogfish

Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing
kept flickering in with the tide
and looking around.
Black as a fisherman's boot,
with a white belly.

If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile
under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin,
which was rough
as a thousand sharpened nails.

And you know
what a smile means,
don't you?

*

I wanted the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,

whoever I was, I was

alive
for a little while.

*

It was evening, and no longer summer.
Three small fish, I don't know what they were,
huddled in the highest ripples
as it came swimming in again, effortless, the whole body
one gesture, one black sleeve
that could fit easily around
the bodies of three small fish.

*

Also I wanted
to be able to love. And we all know
how that one goes,
don't we?

Slowly

*

the dogfish tore open the soft basins of water.

*

You don't want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it's the same old story - - -
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.

*

And look! look! look! I think those little fish
better wake up and dash themselves away
from the hopeless future that is
bulging toward them.

*

And probably,
if they don't waste time
looking for an easier world,

they can do it.

Zen reflections

"Second Lesson Of Reflection" by Navitrolla

The mind is like a reflection in a mirror:
Though it is insubstantial, it is not nonexistent.
What is, we have no control over;
And what isn't, is ephemeral
Aren't the esteemed sages
Just regular people who've resolved the matter?

There are changes upon changes.
Once the five components are clearly seen,
The diverse things in the world are joined into one.
How can there be two formless dharma bodies?
Once compulsive desires are eliminated and insight comes,
There are no thoughts about where the promised land may lie.

The will to survive must be killed off.
Once it is killed off, there will be peace of mind.
When the mind integrates this,
An iron ship has been made to float.

-P'ang Yun

Mirror Pond On Mount Taibo In Shanxi

The water and my mind have both settled down
Into perfect stillness.
Sun and moon shine bright in it.
At night I see in the surface
The enormous face of my old familiar moon.
I don't think you've ever met the source of this reflection.
All shrillness fades into the sound of silence.
But now and then a puff of mist floats across the mirror.
It confuses me a little
But not enough to make me forget to forget my cares.

- Hsu Yun

The mind-mirror is clear, so there are no obstacles.
Its brilliance illuminates the universe
To the depths and in every grain of sand.
Multitudinous things of the cosmos
Are all reflected in the mind,
And this full clarity is beyond inner and outer.

- Yoka Genkaku

Actually there isn't a thing
much less any dust to wipe away
who can master this
doesn't need to sit there stiff

- Feng-kan

Looking For Each Other

I have been looking for you, World Honored One,
since I was a little child.
With my first breath, I heard your call,
and began to look for you, Blessed One.
I've walked so many perilous paths,
confronted so many dangers,
endured despair, fear, hopes, and memories.
I've trekked to the farthest regions, immense and wild,
sailed the vast oceans,
traversed the highest summits, lost among the clouds.
I've lain dead, utterly alone,
on the sands of ancient deserts.
I've held in my heart so many tears of stone.

Blessed One, I've dreamed of drinking dewdrops
that sparkle with the light of far-off galaxies.
I've left footprints on celestial mountains
and screamed from the depths of Avici Hell, exhausted, crazed with despair
because I was so hungry, so thirsty.
For millions of lifetimes,
I've longed to see you,
but didn't know where to look.
Yet, I've always felt your presence with a mysterious certainty.

I know that for thousands of lifetimes,
you and I have been one,
and the distance between us is only a flash of thought.
Just yesterday while walking alone,
I saw the old path strewn with Autumn leaves,
and the brilliant moon, hanging over the gate,
suddenly appeared like the image of an old friend.
And all the stars confirmed that you were there!
All night, the rain of compassion continued to fall,
while lightning flashed through my window
and a great storm arose,
as if Earth and Sky were in battle.
Finally in me the rain stopped, the clouds parted.
The moon returned,
shining peacefully, calming Earth and Sky.
Looking into the mirror of the moon, suddenly
I saw myself,
and I saw you smiling, Blessed One.
How strange!

The moon of freedom has returned to me,
everything I thought I had lost.
From that moment on,
and in each moment that followed,
I saw that nothing had gone.
There is nothing that should be restored.
Every flower, every stone, and every leaf recognize me.
Wherever I turn, I see you smiling
the smile of no-birth and no-death.
The smile I received while looking at the mirror of the moon.
I see you sitting there, solid as Mount Meru,
calm as my own breath,
sitting as though no raging fire storm ever occurred,
sitting in complete peace and freedom.
At last I have found you, Blessed One,
and I have found myself.
There I sit.

The deep blue sky,
the snow-capped mountains painted against the horizon,
and the shining red sun sing with joy.
You, Blessed One, are my first love.
The love that is always present, always pure, and freshly new.
And I shall never need a love that will be called “last.”
You are the source of well-being flowing through numberless troubled lives,
the water from your spiritual stream always pure, as it was in the beginning.
You are the source of peace,
solidity, and inner freedom.
You are the Buddha, the Tathagata.
With my one-pointed mind
I vow to nourish your solidity and freedom in myself
so I can offer solidity and freedom to countless others,
now and forever.

- Thich Nhat Hanh

Sufi reflections

"First Lesson Of Reflection" by Navitrolla 

Looking For Your Own Face

Your face is neither infinite nor ephemeral.
You can never see your own face,
only a reflection, not the face itself.

So you sigh in front of mirrors
and cloud the surface.

It's better to keep your breath cold.
Hold it, like a diver does in the ocean.
One slight movement, the mirror-image goes.

Don't be dead or asleep or awake.
Don't be anything.

What you most want,
what you travel around wishing to find,
lose yourself as lovers lose themselves,
and you'll be that.

- Attar

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both. We are
the sweet, cold water and the jar that pours.

- Rumi

The Mirror

Your eye has not strength enough
to gaze at the burning sun,
but you can see its burning light
by watching its reflection
mirrored in the water.

So the reflection of Absolute Being
can be viewed in the mirror of Not-Being,
for nonexistence, being opposite Reality,
instantly catches its reflection.

Know the world from end to end is a mirror;
in each atom a hundred suns are concealed.
If you pierce the heart of a single drop of water,
from it will flow a hundred clear oceans;
if you look intently at each speck of dust,
in it you will see a thousand beings.
A gnat in its limbs is like an elephant;
in name a drop of water resembles the Nile.
In the heart of a barleycorn is stored a hundred harvests.
Within a millet-seed a world exists.
In an insects wing is an ocean of life.
A heaven is concealed in the pupil of an eye.
The core at the center of the heart is small,
yet the Lord of both worlds will enter there.

- Mahmud Shabistari

I Was Nothing

When my mind was cleansed of impurities,
like a mirror of its dust and dirt,
I recognized the Self in me:
When I saw Him dwelling in me,
I realized that He was the Everything
and I was nothing.

- Lalla

How we could bridge the gap

The mind creates division

And division is another name

For devastating pain.

The heart creates oneness,

And oneness is another name

For spontaneous joy.

Sri Chinmoy

Go to the truth beyond the mind. Love is the bridge.

Stephen Levine

Art by Navitrolla : "How We Could Bridge the Gap"