To Walk the Razor's Edge
I return from such a short time away, what might have been a short time away, to find that the leaves have all flown, and the slate skies of winter have taken their places at the edges of each branch and twig. This morning the wind rose up in the north, like a great wave coming ashore, and its voice spoke louder and louder in the woodlot behind the house. It’s word was cold.
A timepiece measures events in a linear fashion, strings them out along a strand of hours, like pearls or like knots tied against forgetfulness. But life does not travel at the speed of time, it travels at the speed of perception. For one month, Manny and I walked through experiences which split hours into minutes, and minutes into moments, each moment drawn out to its height and depth, in colors and sounds and sensations, so that the fullness of what occupied twenty-four hours of linear time would have demanded a week, or a month of our lives in New England to experience. It takes a certain dedication, a certain persistence to break into the slow lane, to take off the comfortable certainties in which you dress day in and out, to remove the mask you have made of yourself and let the world be a mirror… it either takes flexibility, or creates it, should it not exist.
A friend we made at the Palolem Guest House said: “Well, I think it’s amazing – to take what you have and toss it up in the air, to walk into the unknown again and again. That takes a lot of courage.” Yes, perhaps. But it also takes a lot of courage to stay in one’s job for many years, and it takes courage to begin relationships, more courage to try to make them work, and more courage yet to decide they have ended. It takes courage to face the challenges life brings to us. It takes courage to read that life can be beautiful, and that pain and doubt is part of that indelible beauty. In fact, just being here is a courageous act, regardless of how it turns out, whether next year is a brilliant success or if the tower of our lives is taken apart by earthquake events.
I am home – or, in the place where I lived before I departed for India to find modern masters of meditation and community. The walls of the old farmhouse had been drawn so solidly around me that Byfield became part of my identity, as did many habits of being, some of which were so deeply ingrained that I still find myself unable to name them. But I can affirm that they existed, as upon my return I feel their absence. I lost weight in India, not a few pounds from my physical body, but a weight of imagined responsibility, I loosed a chain of imagined responsibility that was keeping my heart contained. So if I have returned, it is to a life I have not lived before: am I home?
It is always this way, with real travel, travel where you have moved from where you were, and allowed yourself to be changed. Inviting change is always worth the effort, worth the courage.
You help change in two ways: let go! and hold on. That beautiful dichotomy, the essential nonsense within Zen, the path along a razor’s edge which is the surest indication you are close to something vital… You must be soft enough and open enough for something new to flow in to your life; and in equal proportion, you must be strong enough and devoted enough that your psychological muscle can build with what you find. In asana practice, you aim for the point where you are just barely in balance, as though moving a fraction of an inch in any direction would tip you. You want your hand to be open enough to receive a gift, and strong enough to hold it when you have found it.
Manny smiled at my insistence in rising early for yoga: you’re on vacation, you know – you could wake up when you want to wake up… and practice yoga then…? But in fact I could not. The modest effort to rise early and practice, then meditate, was the muscle of manifestation, and has continued from the crucible-fire of travel to my familiar New England chill, and is an essential ingredient for identifying and maintaining new direction. You know when you are on the razor’s edge, because you feel as though you were flying, as though each step wore wings. You know when you have brought this vitality back into your life when you use the muscle of effort and feel stronger and healthier for it.
And the answer is yes: waking at 5:30 and finding almost two hours in my busy schedule just for myself, waking to physical health, then turning to mental health, and allowing that to set the tone for my whole day, is like receiving a bouquet of sweet flowers every morning… sent from myself.
