Scrubbing Away the Past

11-27-17 Scrubbing Away the Past

The last couple of days, I have been organizing, cleaning the studio closet and going through some photographs. This brought to mind how ephemeral our lives are. Without these images, these photographs, I recall very little. I don’t have a need to recall particularly and that is a good thing. Life continues and is in constant change and ready for new interactions.

One may be bound to the past through the strings of relationship and memory. While some historical references are needed, they don’t determine everything that may occur.  We may change our minds, see things differently, devalue and reevaluate our positions.

A person may want to build a Life – to have efforts accrue to show years well spent, actions well-chosen in order to accumulate a solid base. I have a house full of artwork to prove my effort, but the artwork degrades and even at its best is not very important.  Certainly, the artwork is not equal to Life, to the Totality, to the suchness of being.  It is only material form, capable of degrading - bent corners and scratched surfaces.  I can imagine its future place of neglect, of continued decay, of an easy toss into the trash bin. I also have little to show for all my years of teaching, not even a good retirement plan, but I suspect that is the way for most people.  They play out their activities over time and end up with small rewards for their efforts – memories are few compared to the reality they engaged in.

So that is it – in the end, or at any point as long as we are conscious, one only has the recognition of being. There is no fixed moment, one moment melts into another without division. A week cannot be captured as a week. The activities and accomplishments may mark the territory, but nothing replicates the original action. Instead of sorrow, isn’t that liberation?  Not to have to carry either physical or psychological form is freedom.  It’s done and over and we are without burden.  The body sustains itself as it can and the mind could agree to relax and use the files only when necessary.  (The boxes in the closet are only heavy when I get them out.) And the world? The observation of human activity can weigh heavily on us, but it’s not that we can actually carry it, or have control over it, or direct it in the way we see is best.  It is true that there is sorrow for what we perceive as suffering and for what we fail to realize as the ideal. Our unfulfilled dreams create insecurity and tension. We can see that a great deal of human sorrow and human insensitivity is due to the delusion of what we think we are and our consequential efforts at security and importance.  If we actually acknowledged our smallness, our impotence, then our attempts to secure position, to gain recognition, success, and power would be unnecessary.  We could be more generous and caring from this place of non-accumulation.

(Image: Scrubbing Away the Past)