EVERYTHING IS.

Today has been radiant. Today has been reaffirming, beautiful, unified, and complete. The sun is shining on my back, the grass is cool and soft, dandelions are perking up around me, bees going about their labor. I have been joyful all day. This is how the world should always be. Even in inclement weather, witnessing life around me should be the ultimate source of joy, and it often is.

Enjoying the beautiful day outside.

photo credit to author

Why did it take Siddhartha so long to find what he was seeking? This is the main question I have of his pilgrimage. I feel he knew his conclusion all along. But I suppose this is the lesson of misguidance. He knew where truth lie, but he was diverted from it by lessons and words, constructed dichotomies, and the pursuit of quantifiable meaning. Aren’t we all… I find myself retracing my own steps, through philosophies, sciences, teachers – all meaningful, none satisfactory. But these are the paths we are left to take. It is frustrating and circuitous sometimes to seek all within yourself, it is an easy task to give up on. We must find where to take our measurements, when to pin down the constant inner monologue that is the truth as it exists from moment to moment. But what we most often find is that those moments contradict each other. It is living in the contradiction, not trying to reconcile everything.

Because everything is. It’s a simple lesson that Siddhartha learns through a complicated life, and a lesson I often fall back on. I suppose it may seem trivial, naïve even, to be content with such an explanation. But it is so obvious when you sit and listen and observe that being is enough. Being as everything else is. This satisfaction with existence as it is – and whatever that implies – has many applications in our dealings with one another. The “awareness and conscious thought of the unity of all life (p.121)” brings us to realize that we are all of the same material and have the same potential for existence in one form or another, or in no form. By recognizing that potential, we recognize something worth loving and admiring in everything and everyone around us. As siddaharttha tells govinda, “one has to worship within themselves, in you, and in everyone else the buddha which is coming into being, that is possible (p.133).” In this case I take the Buddha to mean our potential for pure love and happiness, for a state of nirvana so-to-speak. By seeing this potential we are “able to look upon it and [ourselves] and upon all beings with love, admiration, and great respect (p.137).”

We are all part of one earth, one universe.

source: http://greenerloudoun.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/nasa_earth.jpg

It is difficult to achieve this in a society that is based on competition, or in Siddhartha’s case, a society based on the differing values of individuals according to a caste system. So it is a cycle we must escape from, like samsara, but must still appreciate as a manifestation of the perfect universe we exist in. Although Siddhartha experienced the negative consequences of living in the sin of “the childlike people”, he still “saw people living for themselves, saw them achieve an infinite amount for themselves, saw them travel, wage war, suffer an infinite amount, and endure an infinite amount. He could love them for it, and he saw life and that which is alive - in each of their passions and actions (p.121).” So we must let go of our judgments and classifications, and allow everything to exist in its current form with the knowledge that it has the potential to occupy any form, including our own. I hope that despite our attempts to categorize the world, to explain the minutae of life, we can “learn to leave the world as it is, to love it, and to enjoy being a part of it (p.134).”