Water from the well
Kosho Uchiyama
Been a while since I thought of Zen, which is possibly a good thing, cos thinking of Zen is like chasing wind sprites…
Anyhoo, a dear friend is staying a the moment while his boyo recovers from a bizzare illness, and it got me thinking about my own life and children, especially the impermanence of life. One of my favourite books on life and letting go/hanging on is Kosho Uchiyama’s “Opening the Hand of Thought”. I thought of it while teaching the other day.
I play an instrument called a Bodhrán (bau-rawn), which is an Irish frame drum, and I also have a couple of students who are learning from me about my philosophy toward the instrument. It was to one of these students that I said, “Holding the tipper is a constant action of holding on and letting go”, which is also a Keith Urban Album note and is also Kosho Uchiyama’s abiding mantra.
We fear loss. We fear it more at different times, and one of those times is when your child becomes severely ill. The axiom that “No parent should ever have to bury there child” comes to mind, but it does happen, and all too regularly.
So we develop the habit of hanging on tightly, gripping the things and people we love with all our energies. In doing so, though, many of us come to realisation that our hands/hearts are are only so big or strong, and we can’t hang on to everything forever. So much angst, so much inner turmoil, too much… We need to let go. Yet, how do we let go without losing those things we hold dear?
Here is what I do, and bear in mind, this is a metaphor, and a poor shade of what Kosho Uchiyama is getting at.
Take an object, any object; a spoon will do… Imbue that spoon with the weight of intense love/desire/person’s character. Hold it tightly for as long as you can, until your hand begins to burn and ache with fatigue, unable to leave even if they wanted to, then, when you can hold it no longer, let it go…
What happened when you let go? Did the spoon fall to the floor or onto the table? That is what my spoons always did when I let them go, and I saw their loss as inevitable and a part of life that must be endured. The floor soon became littered with spoons, and walking around the room became hazardous…
Then I read Kosho Uchiyama, and I saw the image on the front of his book, an upturned hand*. Suddenly I saw that I do not need to let these things I held so tightly fall; I could hold them in my relaxed and open palm, and look at them, see them in their fullness, come to know them, and then, having ‘let go’ I could put them aside, or let them leave or have them stay. They are my thoughts. Thoughts of loss, delusions that want me to not change, to keep the status quo, to live my life pretending that life will go on forever…
Water from the well, and a fresh cup everyday is worth the walk, if only to remind me that all things change, and all things die.
*The book re-release has a different image now; and open window from a room to a garden, from the constrained to the wild, still apt, but not as powerful to me, but that is another thing I need to let go of…