Beyond Time – Page 3 – KM Huber's Blog

Good Manners Make Good Neighbors

Posted on March 23, 2014March 29, 2014 by KM Huber in Beyond Time, Inspiration, Spirituality

The pain of loss sometimes divides me between a life I once knew, and the life I have now, a wall not welcome yet one all my own. Most days my mostly Buddhist self says, “Let’s not attach to the pain of loss or we’ll get stuck in its drama.”

But there seem so many days I am too bound to my mind and unwilling to face life as it is now. My lifelong friend is dead, my ability to move through life threatened emotionally as well as physically. A life I knew is no longer but I hold onto it, as if “walling in” a life were possible.

Finally, reality forces me to focus—I have poured coffee into my oatmeal–mindfulness makes me aware of the wall I have so carefully constructed. So often it is the human way to try and still life.

“Something there is that does not love a wall” is a line from Robert Frost’s “The Mending Wall,” a poem I once knew by heart some fifty years ago. Now, all I recall is a single line but it seems enough.

In the poem, two Maine landowners perform their spring ritual of reinforcing a rock wall that keeps separate his land from his land. Whether it is nature, the magic of elves, a burrowing animal, or a thoughtless hunter that tear down the wall matters not. “Good fences make good neighbors” is the belief of one neighbor while the other wonders if that is true.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
(Robert Frost, “The Mending Wall”)

When I first wrote about this poem in some grade school or junior high English class, I sided with the neighbor who believed a wall was a sign of respect, a reminder of what was not one’s own, a sign of good manners.

Now, I am older or simply old—a final label—yet still on the life side of the wall between here and whatever comes next–the unknown, the intangible—I am here within the laws of nature.

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbours.’
(Frost, “The Mending Wall”)

In my later years, I re-consider what makes good neighbors. It is not good fences or any walling in of loss or walling out of life. It is good manners, a respect for life as it renews on terms not for us to understand immediately but ultimately for us to accept.

Ours is to extend good manners in our relationship with every form of life. It is ours to mimic the apple orchard and the pine forest, as each respects the other without transgression, as both drop their seeds for a life larger than their own.

Ours is to grieve for those who are no longer here. We respect that they lived and left life with us. It is ours to continue without a wall at all. It is good manners that do not love a wall; it is good manners that make good neighbors.

Reference Notes: For a profound essay on grief, loss, and life, I recommend Francis Weller’s “In Praise of Manners;” also, here is a link to Robert Frost’s “The Mending Wall.”

Facing the Past Tense

Posted on March 2, 2014March 1, 2014 by KM Huber in Beyond Time, Inspiration, Spirituality

Do not stand at my grave and weep,

I am not there; I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow,

I am the diamond glints on snow,

I am the sunlight on ripened grain,

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,

I am not there; I did not die. (Mary Frye)

Fifty years of friendship feels like only a moment yet it has been a lifetime. It cannot be over. Not yet. I want the conversation to continue but mostly, I want the past tense to be the present.

In death, the past tense looms. My mostly Buddhist self believes the past tense is a series of images always available for viewing but never again for experiencing.

I am not used to the past tense. I am not ready to live with my friend as mere memory.

If I think of my friend as dead, there is a hole in the sky that is my heart. I want to tell her how that feels, how that hole is now my world. The telephone that connected us as we aged from teenagers to sexagenarians is no longer in service. It is past tense.

In the last couple years, this blog provided yet another connection for us. Sometimes, my posts sparked conversations, and other times, our conversations created posts. On this blog, my friend is eternally present.

Discussion was our way for five decades, not a daily occurrence or even monthly, but whenever there was a hole in the sky for either one of us we seemed to sense it. There would be a phone call or an email when least expected and most needed.

My friend was not one who labeled but one who listened. Her innate compassion and loving-kindness opened her to the world wherever she was. And the world responded to her light.

Along the wend and way of our lives, we each explored Buddhism and over the decades offered our experiences to one another. In these last three years when illness once again marked my life and then for the first time hers, we found ourselves less concerned with outcome and more with exploring the energy of raw emotion.

We were less interested in questions so we had little use for any answer that might appear for we recognized all outcome as temporary. It kept us curious, this being in the moment. We explored eternity as a web without a weaver, its vibrations animating humans, blades of grass–lifetime after lifetime–perfect in its impermanence, forever coming and going.

She is gone in a way I knew and exists in a way I am yet to know. She is in every breeze, blossom, and glint of light in a night sky. She is. The past tense is no more.

My thanks to Diana J. Hale for her recent post, In Memoriam, as it led me to Mary Frye’s poem, which I could not seem to locate. Also, thanks to all of you who have sent personal messages. I will respond to each one.

Aim for Even: Bringing Zen Into Every Day

Posted on January 19, 2014 by KM Huber in Beyond Time, Consciousness, Inspiration, Spirituality

This is the beginning of my third year of blogging about bringing Zen, the “meditative state,” into every moment of every day. There is no one way to do this, as I have learned, but Zen is possible in any and every moment.

The meditative state is being engaged in life, immersed in it, actually. “When coming out of sitting, don’t think that you’re coming out of meditation, but that you are changing postures” (Ajahn Chah).

The act of meditating is to sit in stillness while the practice of yoga moves around the body’s fluids. In both, there is the sensation of being alive. Taking a meditative moment at the end of a yoga session allows the fluids to balance within the body. What was in motion is now in balance for the day.

The postures or positions we assume are unique to us as are our everyday responsibilities. We join with one another in many activities, especially in our work, but even our collective effort is comprised of the unique points of light that each one of us is. That is the meditative state, our own Zen, which we bring to life.

Bringing Zen into our every day may mean stops and starts for a river’s flow is not always smooth, choppy or a torrent but rather, it is steady and swirling simultaneously. Making the meditative state integral to our lives is to aim for even, to meet each moment for all that it is without looking ahead or behind.

To aim for even is to “…stop being carried away by our regrets about the past, our anger or despair in the present or our worries about the future” (Thich Nhat Hanh). Aiming for even is to maintain our balance through the rapids of our lives and to float on moments of reflection. One is not more than the other ever.

To aim for even is to throw off emotional weight past, present or future, to “…see that the emotions themselves arise out of conditions and pass away as the conditions change, like clouds forming and dissolving in the clear open sky” (Joseph Goldstein). Emotions have the substance of a cloud and the energy of the life force, pure and wakeful.

Bringing Zen to the every day is letting the clouds of emotion delight, darken, and dissipate. Emotional balance is more than shrugging off a difficult moment. It is accepting that the dark never stays and neither does the light. Life is impermanent eternally.

“For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them” (Thich Nhat Hanh). To aim for even is to forego pre-conceived notions of what or how life should be. To meet each moment is to allow it to reveal itself in all that it is and then respond.

If we allow the meditative state to remind us that silence is always a response, we are able to immerse ourselves in all that comes to us for as long as it may take but not a moment longer for there is so much more to come.

In meditation, we watch thoughts come and go for that is the posture of the practice. In bringing Zen into the everyday, we allow moments to move through us rather than holding onto them.

These past two years of blogging have been rich years. So many of you have revealed to me perspectives I may not have otherwise considered or have ever discovered. Thank you for bringing Zen into my every day, reminding me to aim for even.

Rather Than Resolutions, Consider Laziness

Posted on January 5, 2014 by KM Huber in Beyond Time, Inspiration, Spirituality

I am not much on making resolutions for any period of time. My mostly Buddhist self knows that each moment is its own clean slate. Rather than becoming anything or anyone, I just need to meet each moment I am given and aim for even.

Some may consider that laziness, and I accept that label in any year, moment, hour, or nanosecond. As with any feeling or emotion, all we have to do is accept that each emotion has its own drama and demon players. Ours is to experience but not to become.

Once we have named the emotion—“this is laziness”–we strip away the drama that has kept us from continuing the story that is our life. Laziness is not “…particularly terrible or wonderful…it has a basic living quality that deserves to be experienced just as it is” (Pema Chödrön).

There is no reason to run away or hide from any emotion. Removing the drama reminds us the duty of being alive requires us to experience our emotions, laziness among them.

If we enlarge our sense of what it is to live, we realize events and emotions are mere scenes in a daily drama, each replaced by the next experience. We are moved by the emotion of each experience but sometimes, we get caught.

“Whatever we discover, as we explore it further, we find nothing to hold onto, nothing solid, only groundless, wakeful energy” (Pema Chödrön). Our discovery that we have experienced laziness and that it is no longer worthy of our rapt attention is the dawning of a new day, a new moment or a new year. Transformation occurs when we no longer disguise or repress what our experience is.

“When we stop resisting laziness, our identity as the one who is lazy begins to fall apart completely” (Pema Chödrön). We have named it so that it becomes nameless and no-thing. The ego is revealed for the groundless dramatist that it is.

What remains is the wakeful energy that allows us a fresh look at ourselves and the world around us. We open to the experience of being alive as the drama unfolds yet again. All we need to do is show up and experience.

“Once More to the Lake” for Reflection on the Year

Posted on December 29, 2013December 29, 2013 by KM Huber in Beyond Time, Consciousness, Inspiration, Spirituality

I am a big fan of New Year’s Eve neither for the noise nor for the celebratory streamers but as a day and night of reflection. Over the past two decades, the last day of each year has emerged as a major holiday for me.

Often, E.B. White’s essay, “Once More to the Lake,” comes to mind not because I am ever lakeside on the 31^st of December but because this final day of the year has become one of “peace, jollity, and goodness” much like White’s childhood summers spent at a Maine lake in many a late August.

For me, New Year’s Eve is “infinitely precious and worth saving” no matter how I have marked the year. I flip through my memories of months as if I were watching the year as a slide presentation, images catching between ceiling and wall. Memories are often served skewed.

More than anything, remembering a year on its last day helps me “enlarge my sense of things” so that my perspective is not confined like water in a glass but broad and open like the lapping waters of a lake. In other words, I become a lake.

Remaining a lake is a lifelong process but the idea has intrigued me since I discovered the story of the Hindu master and his apprentice. Every year I re-tell the story on my blog—at least once—this year, the story seemed appropriate as my last blog post of 2013, a way to enlarge my sense of the year past and open myself to 2014.

As the story goes, a Hindu master grew weary of the constant complaints of his apprentice. No matter the day or the place, the apprentice was not satisfied with his life, how it measured up or how it did not.

One day, the master sent the apprentice to purchase salt. Dutiful but doubtful, the apprentice made the purchase and upon his return, the master told the apprentice to put a handful of salt into a glass of water and take a drink. The apprentice complained that the water tasted bitter.

This was a complaint that pleased the master. He then asked the apprentice to bring the rest of the salt and follow him. After some walking, they came to a lake.

At water’s edge, the master told the apprentice to throw the remaining salt into the freshwater lake. Then, the master told the apprentice to take a drink from the lake. The apprentice said the water tasted fresh. Again, the master was pleased.

The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain remains…exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. Enlarge your sense of things. Stop being a glass. Become a lake.

(Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening)

The story of the Hindu master and the apprentice frames all my New Year’s Eve reflections. Some years are larger than others, and it is true that as I age, I find life less bitter. Perhaps it is that I drink from life with less expectation and with more curiosity. I like to think so.

I do not have the opportunity to drink from a lake so I sip saltwater from a glass. The sting of the salt reminds me how easy it is to savor only the bitter. It is then that I enlarge my sense of things for the mere experience of life is “infinitely precious and worth saving.”

The Eternal Now of All Seasons

Posted on November 24, 2013December 1, 2013 by KM Huber in Beyond Time, Inspiration, Oneness, Spirituality

The holiday season and I have an ambivalent history. Some years, I was unable to let the season go, and other years, I never quite showed up for it. Yet, there is one seasonal constant: tradition says we harvest in fall and give thanks; as winter begins, we give gifts, goodwill among them.

All that is left

to us by tradition

is mere words. It is up to us

to find out what they mean.

~ ibn al-`Arabi~

Each holiday season, I reconsider its traditions in words well-worn as well as new ones: “…to be detached from both the past and future [is] to live in the Eternal Now. For in truth neither past nor future have any existence apart from this Now; by themselves they are illusions” (Alan Watts).

The promise of the Eternal Now is life as a seamless season, gifts available in every moment of eternity. If we embrace this holiday season as the Eternal Now, we open ourselves to a way of life that extends goodwill this day and every day.

Yet, any moment of the holiday season offers us experiences that unwrap us raw. These are gifts that cannot pass quickly enough–or so we think–whether it is the first holiday of loss or just another year that we mark a loss. We remember, as we should.

Like the holiday season, the Eternal Now is not a matter of endurance but a matter of meeting each moment just as we are. We may only manage a breath but that is enough to take us into the next moment. Emptying ourselves into loss opens us to gratitude for having loved at all. In love, we let loss go.

For those holidays I could not let go, I was clinging to the bright and shiny rather than experiencing them. I never really opened their gifts. In those years I completely avoided the holidays, I was surrounded by sparkling gifts not only unopened but unnoticed.

In trying to hold onto a moment and make it stay, we cause ourselves to suffer; if we refuse to show up, we are still seeking what is not and we suffer. Yet, the field of infinite possibilities is always available to us as long as we breathe for we are never out of sync with the Eternal Now, no matter what.

“You may believe yourself out of harmony with life and its Eternal Now; but you cannot be, for you are life and exist Now—otherwise you would not be here” (Alan Watts). We can celebrate our entire lives with the warmth of the holidays if we remember that existence— the Eternal Now — is always in perfect harmony.

My gift to you, and thus to me, is a life lived in the Eternal Now in all seasons.

Regular blog posts will resume December 8, 2013.

Walking Waverly in All its Wonder

Posted on October 27, 2013November 13, 2013 by KM Huber in Beyond Time, Consciousness, Inspiration, Spirituality

It has been twelve weeks since I added a regular yoga practice to my life and ceased my daily, morning walks. The change was a gift from lupus. There have been few days that I did not participate in a full yoga flow and only a day or two that I did not practice at least one pose.

The gifts of yoga have been many and continue to come but I miss walking Waverly, a park I have come to know in all seasons. It is a trusted place. Admittedly, during most yoga sessions memories of Waverly drop in and out.

I hoped to return and have.

It is still too soon to tell whether or not a daily walk may return to my regular regimen but that I was able to walk all around the pond means Waverly is still a possibility from time to time. As often happens at Waverly, it was a walk of wonder for the wildlife is rich and varied. I like to think my return was noticed.

As the images reveal, all of the usual suspects came out, if not to say hello at least to give me a glance. I was especially thrilled to see this creature, whom I have only glimpsed twice before. On this day, there was patience for a portrait.

Turtle Row is especially populous on this bright fall morning with all sizes welcome. Snowy egrets walk water’s edge, sampling the bounty of the pond. As I cross the bridge, the falling leaves crackle as they catch a crisp, momentary breeze.

In every direction is awe for the seeing, and I gawk. After some time I realize I have assumed Mountain Pose or Tadasana: spine straight, knees together with toes pointed in slightly to even my stance, head lifted in full appreciation of just being at Waverly.

Among the many gifts of yoga is learning to move mindfully, neither straining nor restraining the body but moving according to its level of flexibility. Yoga is my dialogue with my physical self; each movement opens my body to response. I have come to recognize the sensation of the flow of my own energy, my own Waverly.

In the real Waverly, my steps are deliberate—once I would have characterized them as slow—sinew connects muscle to bone in simultaneous stride, a mind-body connection. There is a light awareness of sensation with every breath, with every step.

It is a familiar, meditative energy that I have come to appreciate for it is present in a moment of monkey mind or one of being with nature. Such a meditative state always serves, highlighting the sensation of the physical self as the mind drops in thought after thought.

Walking Waverly, I open to its energy, swinging my arms and flexing my fingers just because I can. Images of past yoga sessions drop in and out of my walk, as if to remind me of the first time I felt warmth coursing up and down my legs. It is the energy of life.

I remember that I have not always acknowledged the energy of my life. Just because I was able to walk did not mean I was mindful of my body movement in any regard. It is possible I am receiving another chance despite decades of inattention to my physical self other than to constantly demand of it.

So on this morning as I walk Waverly again, I am mindful of the wonder in every step.

Opening to a New Wind, the Sea Oat Nods

Posted on October 13, 2013October 13, 2013 by KM Huber in Beyond Time, Cooper and EmmaRose, Oneness, Spirituality

Sometimes, it is merely a matter of bending with the breeze, opening up to what is available, allowing a new perspective. As Mark Twain said, “Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.” Nor will it ever for “openness is like the wind. If you open your doors and windows, it is bound to come in” (Chogyam Trunpa).

Openness is the stuff of adventure, and if given a choice, some step back from it. It is the unknown, the uncertain, the unproven so unlike all the labels to which we cling. Yet, at one time or another, the air in our lives grows stale, and we open to a new wind.

Every year, fall is my fresh air. It has long been my favorite season. Even when I lived in the West, I preferred fall to spring, which was an infrequent visitor to the high plains desert. Yet, the rare Rocky Mountain springtime meant seemingly endless prairies of wildflowers.

Now living near the Gulf of Mexico, I find fall comes gradually, mostly, a cooling down to allow another crop of vegetables, another round of blooming bedding plants. This year, fall feels as if it arrived over night, perhaps an afterthought of Tropical Storm Karen who managed to puff herself up a bit but was too disorganized to do much other than blow in autumn. Or at least that’s when I first felt fall.

It is my first autumn without Cooper. We enjoyed every season but when fall temperatures became the norm, we took to the road, sometimes every day of the week. I smile at the flood of memories, ever grateful for each one. They open me to the fall that is, and I am ready for an outing.

It is easy to see Cooper in my mind’s eye sitting in the passenger seat as I drive to Mashes Sands, one of the few places on the Gulf coast that Cooper and I did not explore, although I cannot think why.

A day of sun and blue, the Gulf sparkles at low tide. The breeze is slight as I admire the sea oats so long absent after previous years of hurricanes as well as some recent tropical storms. Breathing in the salted air, I open to the moment of sun, sea, and me.

Sitting on the sand, I close myself to the openness always available in the gap between thoughts, in the pause that awakens awareness. All around me there is sentient movement, coming and going, ebbing and flowing. The fragile but flexible sea oat nods, finding it not difficult to bend, to open completely to possibility.

I hold sand in the palm of my hand as I squint to “see the world in a grain of sand” for I know it to be true. Thoughts fall left and right, like the sand flowing through my fingers, until each grain of thought mingles with all the others to become one. And that, too, is impermanent.

Before this fall ends, there are more breezes, gusts and maybe even gales to come. It is a matter of throwing open the doors and windows for whatever way the wind may blow, and like the sea oat, nod in acceptance.

After Silence, Music Expresses it Best

Posted on September 1, 2013September 21, 2013 by KM Huber in Beyond Time, Consciousness, Inspiration, Oneness, Spirituality

The power of music was the Bloggers for Peace challenge for August. It brought to mind Aldous Huxley: “After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”

Throughout the history of humanity, music has permeated barriers often considered impenetrable. Music unites continents, as the deeds of humanity are recounted in song. Human existence is the song of the ages written across bars of hope and measures of peace.

From Paleolithic time onward, every major tradition—Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism Tao, Hinduism—embraced song as one way to reveal the stories of human existence. Combining music and story, each of the major traditions expressed compassion for all in the community as a way of daily living. Similarly, each tradition warned of the pitfalls of hoarding riches and extolled the virtues of giving to the least among us.

In each verse of the song of community, all give and all receive, the song of the ages expressing the inexpressible.

For many in my generation, “We Shall Overcome” was the song for civil rights for every American as well as every citizen of the world. We are still singing this song, still committed to overcoming what divides us in order to live with what unites us–peace. Globally, it is the melody of the human heart, expressing the inexpressible. Within its coda is the constant vigilance required for compassion and thus, for coexistence.

Peace is not passive but like compassion it is alive, an aria to overcome what we have yet to accomplish in twenty-one centuries: to live with one another in the harmony of acceptance sans the labels of race, creed, color or any dissonance that divides rather than unites.

Since we began composing the story of human existence, there have always been notes of hope. Perhaps the power of music and its ability to express what we cannot will one day lead us to a vigilant, vibrant life of peace and compassion.

It is and always has been to our great credit that we sing.

If memory serves, the video clip of Joan Baez singing “We Shall Overcome” is from the 1969 movie, Woodstock. There was a time I would have recognized it immediately. Well, I still know all the words.

The New Now: A Possum in Moonlight

Posted on August 25, 2013August 24, 2013 by KM Huber in Beyond Time, Consciousness, Spirituality

The possum’s size was considerable enough that first glance indicated it might be an armadillo but the sheen of its fur, seemingly silken in the moonlight, proved it a possum, and a rather deliberative one at that.

Browsing the ground and grasses, the possum foraged with pause, as if such a night of light was evident even with possum vision. Feline EmmaRose (ER) and I had also been drawn to the full moon’s light, as we often are.

In stillness, ER sits a window sill and I sit abed, watching the possum peruse the moonlight. Contentment reigns on either side of the window.

When the possum finally leaves our viewing area, ER yawns and decides it is time to eat so she, too, leaves the moonlight viewing. And after she eats? Well, that now is not yet here, is it?

Every moment is the new now, a peeling back of another layer of the present, offering an experience all its own. It is the only way ER and the possum know–each moment is its own clean slate, free from what was as well as from what might be. Each moment is its own entity.

This musing in moonlight is familiar but there is something in this light at night that seems…well, revelatory.

I remember Anita Moorjani explaining that she begins each day by surrendering herself to whatever the day may bring to her and ends her day by releasing everything that she received. Thus, each day is new and her slate is clean every morning.

For some months now, I have been in-between dances, unable to let go of what was in order to immerse myself in what is. In the moonlight, such struggling against time and tide seems silly and without substance.

A cramp in my hand reminds me I am still clinging to my beloved Kodak camera. There are no possum pictures this night nor will there be from this aged camera. It works beautifully but I had to replace my laptop and the camera software is not compatible.

The Kodak recorded the last years of life for two, aging canines; captured five years of life along the Gulf Coast and the occasional snapshot of the Gulf’s waters; almost, it walked with me through two years of change on Waverly pond. Few objects become dear friends but it is possible, and in the moonlight, I am convinced, yet again, of the sentience of all things.

I suspect every moment is a clean slate but I am not that present and may never be, yet in appreciating that every moment is the new now, I hold onto less and am open to more.

After all, I have watched a possum strolling by the light of the moon.

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