July 23, 2024
L’Chaim!
To Life!
“In your time of reflection, you have to clarify constantly, even if it’s only intellectually: “Why was I born? Why am I here? What is the purpose of my life?” Then keep on asking, “Am I pursuing that purpose? And how am I pursuing it? Is this the best way to pursue it?” If you need help, have the humility to ask for it. Resort to prayer, worship, meditation – whatever will help.” (Swami Sivananda Radha Time to be Holy)
While the Lahaina fire stirred up a wave of worry and sympathy for that storied town, it was but a ripple compared to the waves of emotion and nostalgia that assailed me when our beloved town of Jasper suffered a similar fate in recent days. Looking online for news of the Alberta fires, I instead encountered images of other global disasters; earthquakes, floods, landslides and wildfires that I never knew were happening (in what one son calls “my room of ignorance”) but which are in fact equal or greater tragedies effecting hundreds or thousands of people unknown to me. How to integrate this ever shifting tableau of disaster into the world as I know it? How to reconcile these images and scenes into my sense of reality?
As I write, I’m surrounded by the vibrant greens and burgundies of alpine shrubs and trees, not to mention the riot of colorful flowers and herbs in the planters that mark the periphery of my outdoor “room”. Its impossible to concieve of this scene reduced to blackness and ash, not to mention the structural log cabin that has housed our busy family since long before any of our grandchildren were born. It’s impossible to imagine all of it being “never more”. Impossible to imagine me being never more. But that is reality.
Likewise, l’chaim, a Jewish toast to life carries with it the implicit “l’mitah” or “to death” that some say harks back to the Garden of Eden:
“According to one opinion, the Tree of Knowledge was actually a grapevine. Accordingly, Adam and Eve’s imbibing of grapes (or perhaps wine) brought death into the world.”
In whatever context we place them, life and death are two sides of the same coin; both inescable facts with which we wrestle more urgently when witnessing the destruction of what we hold familiar and dear, or when threatened with the loss of our own precarious existence. At such times Swami Radha’s questions become that much more pertinent. In fact her entire approach to personal growth is to ask question after question, each one aimed at loosening the ties that bind us to inherited or acquired — but ultimately inhibiting — beliefs. The Buddha held a similar approach: “Deliberate and analyze, and when it agrees with reason and conduces to the good of one and all, believe it and live up to it.” Socrates, too, held this view when he said “True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us”.
And of course this brings us to the ego, the part of us that thinks it knows, the part of us that identifies with our bodies and the constructs we have built around the physical aspects of existence – life as we know it through our sense perceptions and the state of mind that interprets them. But what do I really know of life? Or my purpose in living it?
In a practical sense, I know that life animates all the growth I witness around me. Life struggles for a place in the light, or sun from which important nutrients come. This is seen in the way flowers turn their faces toward the sun, and in the contortions a tree makes to escape the shade of its towering neighbours.
It’s also true that some seeds will only germinate in the wake of a fire. Called pyrophytics, “Some plants, such as the lodgepole pine, Eucalyptus, and Banksia, have serotinous cones or fruits that are completely sealed with resin. These cones/fruits can only open to release their seeds after the heat of a fire has physically melted the resin.” (Britannica)
Such is the case for humans, too. As part of satsang (worship) at Yasodhara Ashram those present would pass their hands over a small flame and recite: “When the oil of ignorance is destroyed in the fire of wisdom, may we know our oneness with the Light”. We cannot know this oneness unless the hard shell of our constructs is broken open and admits the light of a higher wisdom. And that wisdom can only be accessed when we’re willing to un-know what we think we know.
And that’s all I know about that!
PS Cuticle cream makes terrible lip balm…