I suppose some know all too well when they’ve just lived their final summer day. Others can only sift through hazy memories for one that might stand out in retrospect. For me, it was the process of reflecting on the changing of the seasons and the changing of the self that caused this summer walk of not so long ago to become indelibly stamped upon my mind.
It was a day on which the heat and residual fatigue from my morning labor combined to leave me walking the final miles home from my afternoon run. Yet again I’d bitten off more than I could chew! All was well, though. That backroad was quiet in a reassuringly familiar way, with nothing much happening down those lonely miles save for a gentle breeze rustling in the dry brush of a fencerow, or the occasional rasping sound of a grasshopper taking brief flight, or maybe a solitary bird trying to start up a conversation. The stillness invited in me reflection and introspection and, as with so many other end-of-summer days in years gone by, a faint sense of melancholy on account of something beautiful slipping inexorably away.
Autumn then was only a week away, and though a recent spell of cool weather had already put us all on notice, at times it felt as though those summer days might just go on and on. Ah, but I knew that those were silly thoughts. Despite the fact that scant few leaves had yet begun to fall, other not so subtle clues foretold that change would soon be taking place more quickly. The soybean plants and cornstalks had for some time been taking on a hue somewhere between that of the dry earth and the golden sun. Yes, and combines had already begun to crisscross the first of the fields to be planted this past spring, stopping every so often to belch dusty grain into the back of a trailer steered into position.
Life seemed on the verge of passing away; and of course it was and it wasn’t all at the same time. The passing away part, however, was tugging at my heartstrings and making me long to burrow ever deeper into the stillness that I knew was all around me, even as it seemed just out of reach. Was I trying to hang onto life more tightly, or was I simply trying to savor it that much more deeply as it passed? Either way, my efforts left me just this side of stillness, walking the backroads with a longing stretching from one side of the valley to the other, from the upper reaches of the watershed through which I walked to as far downstream as I could see.
As it turned out, though, I would only need to drift downstream for a little over a month in such a state of mind before coming to rest (at least for a little while) in the meditation hall of a Zen temple where I practice from time to time. There, after settling once again into waters still and deep, I could easily recognize where my thinking had gone astray. Actually allowing myself to return to stillness reminded me that “hanging onto life more tightly” and “savoring it that much more deeply” both serve to perpetuate the illusion of our separateness – thereby prompting us to yearn for that which already resides within. We cling to experience for the way it bolsters the experiencer – us. The passing away of life “out there” holds a mirror to the passing away of the self “in here.”
But life is always on the verge of passing away. Life is always on the verge of being born anew. Like a dewdrop condensing on a blade of grass at daybreak only to boil away by midday, we arise and pass away based on what causes and conditions flow and ebb. When I get out of the way and simply watch this as it happens instead of “savoring it that much more deeply,” I can actually be the depth of stillness instead of one who merely longs for the experience of it.
In stillness there is only the beauty of that which is…
A cold front passed over the zendo late that afternoon. Wind rushed through the trees, setting branches to pitching and bending, and leaves to swirling and gusting against the windows. Yes, autumn too was fading, and winter would be coming soon. Light flashed from this direction and that as golden leaves from all around the temple directed the sun to where I sat with eyes barely open. Shadows of my form were cast upon the wall before me. On the left and on the right, and right in front of me – alternating, and in collections of twos and threes – the shadows flashed and disappeared, only to reappear and disappear once more. When things happen, time passes. When nothing happens, there is no time.
In time, the wind died down. The light began to fade, and the wall became a field of gray growing darker. Time and stillness merged until, at last, only stillness remained. It’s a peaceful place. In stillness there is nothing that I am, and nothing to hang onto. In stillness there is nothing that I’m not, and nothing to be savored. In stillness there is no “I” to become melancholy on account of beauty slipping inexorably away. In stillness there is only the beauty of that which is, in all its ever-changing glory.
Copyright 2018 by Mark Robert Frank
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