Wangapeka Study and Retreat Centre
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New Year's Resolutions
or is it revolutions?
New Year's Day 2006
Orgyen Hermitage, New Zealand
by Tarchin Hearn
I have just read "On Equilibrium" by John Ralston Saul. This rather dense but thought provoking book explores, amongst other things, the question of common sense and has contributed to this essay.
What do we have in common with each other? What do we share with our parents, our children and the people next door? What do we have in common with the trees and the birds, with the rivers and sky, with weather patterns and communities of intestinal bacteria? What is our commonality with stars and galaxies?
An atom is an interacting sensitivity of protons, neutrons and electrons. Myriad shapes and forms of interacting sensitivities: molecular, chemical, electrical; responsivenesses of cells and organs and organisms. An "Indra's Net" of mutual shapings and influencings and interpenetrations. A staggering interdependency. A beginningless endless community of multileveled communication. A boundless indeterminacy of co-arising factors, ravelling and unravelling in the transient sensing, an ocean of sensing, a commons of becoming, a common sensing, - this mysterious powerful stranger called now.
Winds are blowing down from the Kaimai
Whirling, swirling, gusting, blusting
Raising grit and dust, thrashing the punga fronds
and white noising through the pines
- needles floating in the sky.
Meadow of golden grasses,
of daisy, clover, ragwort and freshly sprouting gorse
countless botanical beings ripple and wave.
Earth pranas chasing and racing.
A joyful patterning
- the weaving and dancing revealed in photons of sun.
A mother thrush hops and runs, hunkered close to the ground as babies peep in the nest.
A hedgehog the size of my fist snuffles through the stubble still looking for worms.
Caffeine is blowing in my blood
Whirling, swirling, gusting, blusting
Raising thought and feeling
oceans of sensation
- rippling conversations of inner and outer.
Biomorphologies of bone and flesh
an infinitude of syncopations,
rhythms and beatings,
weavings of knowing,
coy peaking planes of becoming,
heating and warming and quickening and spreading
this sitting in the morning light
fingers tapping a keyboard
sharing these swirlings with the swirlings
that are you.
There seems a desperate need for certainty
stalking the limited byways of linear viewing.
Plodding, heavying, forcing, coercing
sinking thought and feeling in a shrinkage of general exhaustion.
- so busy, so tired. (Have you been here?)
Lists to be made
Things to be bought
Deadlines to be met.
The daily dose of media fear
whirling, swirling, gusting, blusting,
emotions of compulsion and unfulfilment racing along the
quantum fields of world wide web.
terrorism
bird-flu fear
inflation
mortgage rates
pension stability
eco disaster
fishery collapse
plutonium decay
Oh the list can be great!
Utopias, 'make overs', improvements, things to buy, and plans for control
Dreams of permanence enshrined in repetitive patterns of neural transmission and hormonal release.
And it's so relentless!
Ripplings of thought
flights of narrow fantasy
colluding together,
media enhanced,
a species wide prison of narrowness and monomania
one world, one market, one culture, one truth
disguised in the thin veneer of sound bites, lies and catchy phrases.
My friends
let us wake up!
Our common sense is the sensing that is common to us all.
A most precious quality
Not low grade public beliefs and collective superstitions
- fantasies of guaranteed outcomes driven by painful needs for certainty but
The all-ness of the commons
The vast, infinitude of breezes
the playful, terrifying, invigorating, creating, vividly awake sensing
The responding, dancing, jamming,
ensembles of musing
resonating the symphonies of meadows and thrushes and mountains and stars, and oceans and creatures, both single celled and multi.
We share a common base of sensing!
and in this commons of sensitive knowing, is inherent uncertainty and unresolvedness
the story is vast
and it is still in process
an infinity of factors can never be pinned down in one simple plot-line.
My friends
let us wake up,
and down, and out and sideways
Let us wake in all directions
An Irish wake, singing and celebrating the lives of the departed, embracing impermanence
Our commonness, our humbleness, our unpindownableness.
Let us pause and breathe and actually think!
- some clarity
- some common sense
- some determination to walk, one step at a time,
feet firmly rooted in the groundlessness of now,
valuing the mystery of birthing and dying and indeterminacy.
Appreciating the necessity of others
- the living world in which we live.
Commonsense is precious
It's much more than we usually think.
May it flower in our actions.
Don't be satisfied sleepwalking
Don't shop until you drop!
Notes:
Indra's Net is a metaphor for reality, often used in Buddhist texts. Imagine a multidimensional network. Each nexus point is a jewel that reflects all the other jewels. Each point is ultimately influenced by the activity of every other point.
The Kaimai is the name for a range of steep forested hills in the north island of New Zealand. Orgyen Hermitage is on the flanks of the Kaimai.
Punga is a general term referring to a variety of large tree ferns found in New Zealand.
Sarva Managalam - All is Blessing