Snowy Sun

The sun is shining while the snow is falling, giving a hazy bright orb in the sky. The elements seem all mixed up--sun and snow, cloudy and clear. These cold days, we are at the mercy of the elements.

We can feel the elements outdoors--cold and warm, hard ice and soft snow, breezy or still, wet or dry.

The Buddha instructs us to notice the elements in our body. The hard--bones, finger nails, teeth--the so-called earth element. The wet--blood, sweat, tears, and saliva--the water element. The hot or cool--the so-called fire element. And the breath or passing gas--the air element.

We take a drink of water and swallow. We know the water goes down a tube, through various ponds (e.g., the stomach and bladder), and then down a long canal (the intestine), and an even smaller canal (the urethra), before water pours out of our torsos.

That water wasn't "me" before it entered my body. And it wasn't "me" when it exited. Was that water "element" ever me? How is "our" inner water different from outer water?

The elements are playing with us. Today the sun shines through the snow.

 

Slightly Light

The sun doesn't rise until 7:06 a.m. here in the North country, but when i sit down to meditate at 6 a.m., the sky is slightly lighter than dark. We've gained 15 minutes of daylight in the morning, and so, about an hour before daybreak, light starts leaking into the sky. It's a sight for sore eyes. I can feel my heart dancing in the pre-light of the coming day.

My little groundhog self burrows out of a warm bed, pulls on fleece pants and wool shirts, and goes downstairs to meditate in the dark-light, in the lightening of the dark.

Groundhog Day is coming.

https://pixabay.com/photos/winter-dawn-tree-fog-nature-cold-3321361/

Vole Running Around the Bonfire

As the solstice bonfire leapt toward the sky and began to melt the snow in a three-foot ring around the fire, a vole started running around the fire. It surprised us, and i'm sure we surprised it. The fire surprised it. The heat surprised it. 

Voles don't hibernate. Come spring, we can see the tracks of their snow tunnels running this way and that in the brown grass.

I suppose the vole's snow tunnel suddenly melted. The vole was suddenly quite warm. People everywhere. Where to go? It finally took shelter in a small pile of kindling.

You've heard me talk about the voles eating my broccoli seedlings--all 36 of them. The voles take quite a toll on the spring garden. At the same time, mother voles are the most prolific of all rodents, having as many as 12 litters (= 100 babies) each year. Destruction and creation. Quite a keynote for these COVID times.

Where do we take shelter from the social change, change, change that surrounds us?

I take refuge in the Buddha.

I take refuge in the Dharma.

I take refuge in the Sangha.

A more enduring shelter than a pile of kindling.

Love Steers the Stars

As soon as our solstice bonfire got started around 6:15, the clouds parted and the half moon shone through. A few more minutes and the stars popped out. Our view of the southwest sky was blocked by hills and trees, but Jupiter and Saturn set at 6:19 and 6:20, so we weren't going to see the Great Conjunction anyway.

Since the planets were conjunct at zero degree Aquarius, some astrologers say this is one more step toward the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

Peace will guide the planets.

And love will steer the stars.

May it be so.

Second Summer

It's been a beautiful second summer here in the North Country. Last week and this, temperatures have been in the sunshiny 60s during the day. I keep taking off the layers i put on pre-dawn until i'm down to short sleeves and long cotton pants. Then, as soon as the sun sets, the day-dusk cools down to fleece weather. Even so, the evenings are lovely under a clear starry sky.

Change. So many changes of clothes during the day. Fleece pants, a long-sleeved merino wool shirt, and a fleece hoody as soon as i arise for morning meditation at dawn. By ten in the morning, i've shed the long sleeves for my short-sleeves underneath. Next to go are the fleece leggings. If i'm outdoors, even the short sleeves may be discarded for the tank top underneath that. Then one by one, i put them all on again.

Change. Change. And more change.

The Wind

 

Just before the rain, the wind  blows beautifully. A cool warm wind. I lie in the hammock and watch clouds skid across the sky. 

It's heaven out near the vegetable garden, surrounded by red- and yellow-leaved trees. I'm wearing long sleeves, but the temperature is just right. 

The wind blows the Cheryl-ness out of me until i can feel the clouds skating across the sky also skating through my chest. It's wonderfully wild in the great outdoors.

Dragonflies in the Skies

Dragonflies are flying around over my four-foot wide fishpond and my lawn in the forest. I'm surprised that my "puddle" in the woods attracts them.

The dragonflies fly at an altitude of about 30 feet, so i don't notice them unless i look up. Now i realize one more reason why we don't have mosquitoes in our yard. The dragonflies are patrolling the skies.

If we can open our minds to peripheral awareness--awareness of all the sights, sounds, senses that are happening every moment--we can patrol the sky of awareness even while watching the meditation object of a dragonfly or the breath, for instance.

If we rest in awareness, then we can catch those pesky mosquito thoughts before they cling to us and bite.

Rest in awareness like a dragonfly.

Refreshing My Self

Every time I think a thought, the self refreshes itself like a website refreshing itself when I hit the Refresh button. When thoughts peter out to occasional wisps, the self drifts off into scattered clouds, and the spacious, clear blue sky can be seen.

Thoughts are often self-referential, which is to say, i'm often talking to myself about myself, not unlike James Joyce's character, Mr. Duffy, who lived a short distance from his body.

Outdoors, in the garden is a good place for thoughts to drift away. Suddenly, there's just a body walking on a path to the vegetable garden. Hmmm. I wonder who she is. A coalescing of very familiar habits, including mental habits.

What? I silently ask. 

There is no who. 

There is no how of how this happened. 

There is no where—only here. Here and here and here without a there, without a where. 

There is no when—only now. Now and now and now without a then, without a when. 

I suppose there is no what either, but that interrogative will have to suffice for the moment, this present moment, only moment. 

For the what has no that, no that-ness. Only this without a that.

Frozen North

It is C-O-L-D here in the North Country. Freezing. Below freezing. Way below freezing. Frozen. Frozen hard.

And the sky is blue. The sun is shining. It's a beautiful day.

The house was cold when i got up this morning, but 5 hours later, it's tropical in here thanks to passive solar sunshine.

Just when i want to categorize something (or someone), i see that the opposite is also true at the same time. Cold AND hot. Inside AND outside.

Identity is a peculiar thing. It keeps changing. Just like everything else.

Blue Sky

We are on vacation in the Caribbean, expecting sunshine every day. Yet a few days have been overcast with sprinkles or easy tropical rain. By afternoon, the clouds clear and the sun is shining in the blue sky again.

The Blue Sky vine (Thunbergia) is a lovely familiar tropical vine whose periwinkle flowers drop on the ground.

Rain falls. Flowers fall. It's all impermanent. Things change. The weather changes. Flowers change. Yesterday the blue vine flowers were fresh and lovely. Today they are old and brown.

I'm enjoying the blue sky here in the Caribbean.

Icicle Moon

A fingernail of the waning moon hangs in the sky at dawn, flirting with a small pink cloud, which drifts away as the sliver of moon rises into the day and disappears. A nearby icicle watches all of this, frozen as it is on a freezing day.

The moon disappears though we "know" it is still there. Sort of like Awareness, there but invisible to ordinary eyes. Our ordinary eyes focus on icicles, freezing the ever-changing movement of Now into things. And we play with these things as if they are real. As one teacher says, "Nouns are just slow-moving verbs." Nouns make us think that things exist. Nouns delude us into everyday reality.

We catch glimpses of Awareness, just as we catch glimpses of the fingernail moon. Awareness is always there--quietly saying nothing.

Pink-Orange Dawn

This morning's dawn startled me with pink-orange clouds in a blue sky.

Any day can dawn with startling news--news that we didn't expect, news that we don't want. Surprise!

We know and yet we don't know that Life can go in any which direction. Some of us have more resilience than others. Some of us have more tolerance for ambiguity.

A new day dawns. And i am startled.

Sugar maples stand out now with their beautiful yellow foliage, especially this late in the season. Peak foliage, about a month ago, was rather muted. But now that there have been some frosts, the yellow maple leaves against the blue sky look spectacular.

Sometimes, it's not until the "first frost" falls on us that we take this ending of the season seriously. A friend who had a heart valve replacement earlier this year is selling her house and moving into a retirement community. She was out of commission for six months after surgery and realized that house upkeep is not how she wants to spend her remaining life energy. She is loving downsizing.

The yellow maple leaves are beautiful. And short-lived.

Day of the Dead

Photo credit: Eneas de Troya via Flickr

It's the Day of the Dead, a Mexican celebration, which is slowly becoming more popular in the rest of North America.

So much dead vegetation surrounds us in this season. Annual flowers are brown and gone. Summer vegetables have bought the farm. Leaves have fallen, are falling from trees, which themselves look like timber skeletons reaching toward the sky. The compost pile is full of garden detritus and resting in repose.

Spend this day considering death--of the garden, of friends, of you yourself.

You might consider downloading the WeCroak app on your smart device to receive 5 daily reminders of death.

Find happiness by contemplating your mortality.

Sunny Sunflowers

Today i went to a Seed Celebration and bought home-grown seeds. As you know, my seed inventory was recently decimated by mice, so i'm starting fresh. One vendor said she grew 20 acres of sunflowers last summer.

The sunflower lady said she and her husband just walked around in their sea of sunflowers, looking at the yellow petals against the blue, blue summer sky.

Can we show our sunny disposition? Even on a cloudy day? True happiness does not depend on outer conditions. True happiness might be as small as seeing a single sunflower.

Ixora

Ixora is blooming right outside the front door of our Airbnb condo. Due to its evergreen leaves and constant blooms, ixora is used often and everywhere in the tropical landscape.

The one blooming outside our front door is a beautiful sunset color. The young blooms are yellow; the middle aged blooms have streaks of pinky-orange; and the old blooms become almost completely salmon-colored. Sort of like an aging sunset, which begins sunny yellow and morphs into a pink-orange sky.

We too age and our skin changes color. Our skin starts off clear and unblemished, then becomes splotchy and more colored as we age.

In our culture, our eyes prefer the "young" color and fail to see the beauty of the "old" color.

Can we look without judgment? Can we see nonjudgmentally?

Fiery Sky

The sky is on fire this morning, perhaps warning of us of.... What? Weather, yes, but something else?

The Buddha encouraged us to meditate as if our hair is on fire. Life is short. Too short.Meditate right now, right where you are sitting. Take a 3-breath trip into mindfulness.

Forest Skyline

A few years ago, I bought a cup on Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands in Washington state. This is my favorite cup, though its colors are not my usual colors.

And then, this week, I "saw" for the first time that this cup is the same colors as the sky and the forest. In fact, its abstract edginess even looks like the forest skyline.

This is what perception does: enables us to re-cognize something familiar, something with which we have associations. In reality, the cup is about sky and forest as much as a cloud looks like a camel. Perception comes and goes and enables us to get along in the world, but when you look closely has no real reality.

Never mind. I still love this smallish cup of green and blue.

Petunia Night Sky

I fell in love with Petunia Night Sky as soon as i saw it in someone else's wagon at the nursery. Even though a single plant cost $5.95, i plopped one in my wagon too.

I lead a loving-kindness meditation called Breath In Peace and Breath Out Love. The initial instruction is "Breathe in peace from wherever you think peace resides: a still mountain lake, a meadow filled with wild flowers, the trees in the forest, or the night sky with the moon and the stars."

I imagine peace in the night sky. Breathing in peace, i breathe out love. Petunia Night Sky reminds me.

The Elements

I've returned home to the North Country, skin tanned by the west Texas sun, hair blown wild by the wind, and the body slightly dehydrated from the heat. The elements of heat and wind (air) showed their strength, but didn't arm-wrestle me to the rocky ground, though most plants looked parched. Surprisingly, standing in a 105 degree hot spring beside the Rio Grande on a 101 degree day felt really good on my bare feet..

Here in the North Country, the day is chilly, the sky is clouded, and mud and mud puddles are drying up. Green begins to twinkle in my brown gardens, inviting me outdoors.

Hot/cold, sun/clouds, heat/chill, wet/dry--our skin feels all of these. Some are pleasant; others unpleasant; and we react accordingly.

Really, the air is blowing through us. We breathe air, which is never ours anyway, and let it go when we exhale. We marinate in the temperature du jour--the sensations of our skin responding as it loses or gains heat continually. We drink water from the tap (from a well, from the city water tanks, which come from rivers and reservoirs). Our body feels solid, yet is ever-changing as water, heat, air, and solids enter, pass through the body, and exit via the trap doors at the base of the torso.

We ourselves are plain old elements, recombined.