Touching the Earth

"To practice beginning anew is to bathe in the water of compassion. Compassion gives us a chance to return to the joy of being alive" – Thich Nath Hanh, from Touching the Earth








I

There are many practices available to us to exercise spirituality, but do we take advantage of them? We perceive that there used to be a day in our not too distant past that people regularly exercised in prayer. We could easily conceive of a farmer, for example, who, directly connected to the land in a caring relationship, prayer for rain, sunshine and growth for harvest, would be a natural motion of mind and belief. Continue to move back through generations. With lives difficult, and phenomenon unexplained, we pause in our days to reflect and love the powers of this earth and, for some, the powers of something unseen. Why is it then that it is only in this particular generation that we no longer pray or pay heed to phenomenon, the earth, humility, our ancestors, what is possible, and what it is that we should avoid for the sake of decency. As we reel sometimes through the hours of the day in reaction to a scattering of loud voices and strange disparate images, we might come to see that now, more than ever, we all must cultivate some form of reverence, prayer, meditation, whatever you like, but that is something that is a daily reminder of gratitude and appreciation, at the very least. That there is any cultural pushback against these notions – that meditation or prayer, often seen as two sides of the same coin – is not a particularly heartening trend in our culture. If one man believes in a god, but another believes in the bio-spirituality of the earth, are either wrong, or should either be chastised or distrusted? In a time of spiritual limbo, it must be understood that it is those who might frown upon a spiritual exercise that are the very onlookers who need the most assistance in their lives, for they have lost fundamental tenets of any spirituality – tolerance, compassion, humility, reverence, and the list goes on. People of this generation must strong and willful. They must listen to the messages that they are receiving from within and realize that these messages, by definition, cannot be created merely from within in isolation; we are independent creatures, yes, but we are also product of our times, of our culture, of our education, and of our particular earth history. We are poised right now to cultivate those messages within and turn them into practices that release us towards the values listed above. For one person it is art; another it is traditional (genuine) prayer; for another it is meditation; and for another it is natural experiences.

In May we could consider the rain strings of crystal jewels.
A single raindrop that slides across the metal railing a lace.
Oak buds have bloomed along the riverside and I wonder
if there is a land so pure that jade blooms in every direction.

Such simple lines to create above. Prayer, poetry, reflection, art, whatever the case may be, takes only moments. We may feel lost inside any given time of day; we stay busy in order to avoid this, and then we look back to our hours and realize that perhaps nothing was particularly memorable. We sit down long enough to eat dinner and as we peak outside maybe there is a tree or river, a farm field, or a garden. We realize that this is the peace and decency that we have been waiting for, but we can't quite explain it. Why am I spending all of my time doing everything except for the very thing that provides me some connection or solace? It is upside down, convoluted. In a way, we are all still farmers, hunters, gatherers, but living at a time when none of these might be practiced. We live inside days filled with everything except what we are genetically. The way of spirituality, at any level, will have to do to some degree just as much renunciation of this 'opposite life.' When sitting at a desk inside an office which has no windows available to the outside world, consider visualizing the image of the natural world. Hold onto it and thank it. Write something down and make a promise that, after work, you will take a five minute walk among the trees. Don't just thank the trees, but thank yourself for having this message inside you already. It is there and always has been.