I used to leave my i.phone turned off, a means of emergency contact in my car only. Now, however, the phone is used for work and connection more than ever, and why is this? Because everyone else does and that’s the way of communication for my business as well as friends. How easy it is to get sucked into our devices’ desires for us, click and scroll, click and scroll, read the latest news, the latest horror. Whether it’s Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Haiti, our own country, the Uyghurs, Myanmar, or for me the mounting suffering of animals not only in the above countries but in some ways worse, raised confined for their flesh, horns, secretions, or used in testing pharmaceutical products. My mind struggles with the sorrow of their suffering and my impotence to do much more than sign petitions, donate, or live by example. I think of the sages who say the world and all its joys and suffering is no more than illusion. “Realize the Self,” and you and they are free. For the average person, this can be hard, a sudden dropping of the ego to reveal self-realization, and yet, when I turn my gaze to two little dogs digging in the dirt on a soft spring morning, or in fact when I turn to almost anything in nature, it’s all around me, all these enlightened teachers living their lives without worry—simply living out their lives in the perfect simplicity of Being.
Large swaths of smiling yellow daffodils…spring’s new beauty stop me in awestruck tracks afresh every year. The earth, having survived its own traumas in the form of cold and ice, renews itself in spring and so too may we humans when we stand still on a pure spring day and feel the beauty of life all around us.
Spring offers us her tender newness, the abundance of blossoming trees, and the perfect chance to observe all these Masters of Enlightenment: earthworms, titmice, rabbits, field mice, violets, and weeds…. I was walking Sparkle and Stash by the side of a pond when Stash stopped to sniff. I too stopped and turned to behold the sublime stillness of five water turtles sunning on a log. A life form that has been around for more than 200 million years, far longer than humans, and no wonder. I often feel the earth would heave a sigh of relief if the human population went extinct and know surely the turtles would. Sparkle pricked her ears, and I watched as a large snapping turtle flopped down into the water, leaving the painted turtles to the log. The world of the turtles on their sunny log and the world of the pink and white blossoms cares not for the manmade traumas that surround so many today. The birds, even with their numbers, like the turtles, drastically reduced, seem also to care not, and go about their business building nests and pecking at seed. Back home in our yard Sparkle races after a squirrel (who easily scampers out of harm’s way) and Stash rolls around on the new green grass. All around are pink and orange tulips, purple and yellow hyacinths. The fruit trees are putting on quite a show, the magnolia and forsythia, too. Soon there will be the viburnum, the dogwood, and redbud. The wise crows caw back and forth. The Carolina wren is as vocal as ever and should have his own sitcom. And at night, the peepers are the only music I need. I call to the dogs and breathe in spring’s purity, and decide to let all these gentle masters teach me how to live.
