“We have always been at war with Eurasia.”

In another blog post with a more business focus, "Take Time to Reflect" (link), I encounter the realization that today, 18-years after the 9/11 attacks, we may have freshly minted adults joining the U.S. Armed Services. Soon enough, many of them may be far from home in support of missions and their derivatives that are rooted in events that occurred before they were born.

Some karma has momentum rooted in lore and embraced as one's raison d'etre. How often to we pause to check our assumptions as well as our compass? How often do we ask ourselves "Why?" How often do we either re-validate or reconsider?

So, when you take time to reflect, reflect fully, as this may always be your last, precious opportunity to embrace your fate or to change it.

Don't Give Up.

There was a time in my life wherein random strangers would appear with the message "Don't give up."

Seriously.

And, yes, literally.

One time, sitting in the courtyard in front of the local mall with my mandolin, I was chatting with a fellow interested in the instrument. He knew guitar, if I recall correctly, so I explained the mandolin's tuning, showed him a few chord shapes, and handed him the instrument. He strummed it and sang an impromptu song with a chorus highlighting "Don't give up."

In my last post I mentioned encountering "messengers" and hearing those odd messages hidden inside me that I probably needed to hear. Here was a message coming again and again, but I had no idea what it was for. "Don't give up. Don't give up. Don't give up what?" The situation never devolved into an undying desire to find what it was I wasn't supposed to give up. It just lingered ~ who knows why? The notion occurred that maybe it was a message for someone else, but for whom? The best I could do was to pass it on, letting people know what I had heard.

"Don't give up" faded away.

Today, I am tired ~ a bit worn. Days and nights are both long, and I'm awake, studying new things, building on what I know, wondering how that direction might play out. And there's little to show from all that increasing effort but thinning faith.

Tired but not asleep, listening to the rain...

The Pabbatopama Sutta: "I inform you, great king, I announce to you, great king: aging and death are rolling in on you. When aging and death are rolling in on you, great king, what should be done?"

Don't give up? I don't know.

In my first post for an old zen center's new website, I announced back then "Don't suffer alone," so the taunting or the silence of all voices keeps one company.

Don't give up.

Living Koan

This fellow... I met him in a random encounter I don't know how many years ago, and I've seen seen him again in random encounters I don't know how many times since, here, there, and everywhere, all around town.

Tonight he rolled up on his bicycle, dropped his kickstand, and took a seat at the table with my son and me. He's somehow past the need to ask if he's intruding.

In fact, and by his own assertion, he's wired a little bit differently than the rest of us. Now in his thirties, his mom cared for him until her death earlier this year. He is "functional" in that he holds a job and can get out and about alone, but he is undoubtedly a bit touched.

Folks like this I think of as "messengers" of sorts: they operate just enough within the envelope of normal conversation to slip into your own flow without "turbulence," but inevitably something is going to happen that completely disrupts that flow or just splits your thought patterns enough to cause you to tilt your head and squint a little, leaving you wondering what this conversation is really all about.

That effect -- the mental "hiccup" -- is particularly interesting if you can get past the annoyance of something not making sense and you can catch yourself tying to fill in the blanks. These "messenger moments" are times when, out of the blue, I see something beneath my own surface appear before me -- a message for me from within me appears. Sometimes, it's an eerie realization that my thoughts and speech are not directed at the person sitting in front of me; rather, I'm reliving an older conversation with someone else, or maybe I'm giving advice to a version of myself, or maybe I'm realizing that --given new information and experience -- an old conversation was a mistake. Sometimes it's enough to see that I am projecting myself into the encounter and not really hearing the person in front of me...

But then again, maybe that fellow in front of me is doing the same, and we're not hearing each other at all. We're odd reflections of ourselves that catch our eye, triggering sequences and patterns as we relive them all again.

Soon, by the way, maybe it's not just people... after all, what can have our attention that is not entwined with our experience, thoughts and memories, hopes, our senses, habits, and so forth? If the world suddenly blurred into a van Gogh painting swirling about, wouldn't we still find ourselves in it? What would be your teacher, moment to moment, if you didn't believe it had to look like a person with robes, a stick, and a certificate? The teacher is everywhere if a teacher is what you believe you need; with any luck, it will be in a form you can recognize and accept.

And maybe once we're done experiencing that and we understand it, it's gone.

Another dead end? Maybe not. How can everything change if you can perceive it differently? What if the answers to any of your questions could be found all around you?

Still have questions? Have none? Back to practice.