Change is The Still-Point

Succeed in these exercises or quit writing entirely? Who is she to suggest that I quit writing? Who am I not to listen? Why am I already convinced that I will fail at the simple task of writing when I rise in the morning, and of setting aside 15 minutes a day to write (at varying times)? Surely, though I have difficulty overcoming my resistance to any aversive experience, I can, with a concerted effort, manage to sit and write just like this for a paltry few minutes a day. And as for mustering that concerted effort, surely that is one of the great life skills that must be cultivated to attain balance, strength, and freedom? Surely I must learn that my aversion to particular situations or activities is as temporary and fleeting as this life as a whole! Surely I must learn that without such an effort I am dooming myself to a life of mediocrity. Where is my daring? For surely these tasks call upon me to dare to be something better than I am, to dare to overcome the simple hardships of directing my own attention down constructive paths. Surely there is joy to be found in construction despite the eventual unfortunate end that all things face?

Perhaps my understanding of creation and destruction is itself too dualistic. Perhaps I must recall that both creation and destruction are simply manifestations of change, the single universal constant, the process underlying all being. To construct and to create is not simply a vain struggle against the eventual destructive impulses of samsaric life. There is no opposition to the natural order in construction. The only suffering to be had is to believe that creation exists independently of destruction, to believe that I might build myself up and never come down. But the value of life, if one is to be found, surely cannot be said to exist in avoiding experience entirely! Perhaps when “they” say that life is a journey, they are referring not only to movement toward a specific end, but rather a tour. A tour of being, of the ups and downs of life, of the ins and outs of creation and destruction: change. Perhaps change is the still-point in the midst of change, the unchanging center of our cosmos? Perhaps that is the level at which one may find some joy, some release, some ease: an expansive and spacious healing breath of ecstatic cosmic vibration. To seek creation without embracing the eventuality of destruction is itself, indeed, a fool’s errand. But must all errands therefore be those of a fool? Is there nothing to be said of pursuing goals, not with the naïve belief that any single or several attainments might cure the world or the individual of his ills, or with any hope of gaining an idea of universal scope that might somehow fit within a single human being’s brain-mind. Rather, investigating certain developments and unfoldings with the curiosity of a child, born into a land where he cannot stay for long, and seeking to learn as much as he can of the goings on there, though in short time this learning will be lost, will be put to rest along with the child. All of it is part of the song, part of the journey, part of the tour of change that describes our earthly lives.