Breathing It All In... Blog #10

Wednesday April 17^th, 2013… Flagstaff Hill, Schenley Park…6:56 p.m…68 degrees … dusk…Last Blog…

The sun is low and deep not seeking attention instead humbly passing it to the sky.  She condescendingly glides through emptiness towards an invisible horizon. It feels like a moment where everything slides into their place.  The singing and chirping of the robins and wrens hushed; the screams of excitement from the ultimate Frisbee game whispered. The echoes of machinery muffled. All about them it is still and shadowy and sweet. It is a wonderful moment when, for lack of a visible horizon, the not yet darkened world seems greater: a moment when almost anything can happen or be believed in. It reminds me of something someone said to me long ago that I have never forgotten because it is right. “Never waste any amount of time doing anything important when there is a sunset outside that you should be sitting under!” And Why not? There is a sunrise and sunset every day, and they are absolutely free, so why miss any of them? Like the first pangs of love the colors blaze a grapy dusk; the sun looks like burgundy, the color of pressed grapes. Sunsets drip and smell of fruits: melon fields, and peach groves with bits of tangerine. I trust Cezanne might capture it best. As the last remnants of redness seeped from the sky the air turned cooler, staining and dyeing the evening purple. 

I sit and breathe. Breathe… In… and out… simply… breathe. Of all the things I have taken away from coming to this spot this semester, it is the acknowledgement and humble attention I have given my breath. It is my breath that will resonate longest and provide for me the most.  It is easier here, more natural, less restrained, more pronounced, fuller, deeper and rounder. The presence it provides brings me nowhere/ now here.  The moment, dangling, never to be had, only to be… It is where I find my friend myself and experience: allows me to look with eyes that can see and listen with ears that can hear. Why can I find this easier here than elsewhere? What is it that nature supplies and provides for this ease?… this BIENG?…  this sensitivity to life?

Why is nature so beautiful? Why does sitting still or a short walk amidst nature have such a calming influence on our mind? Why does the sight of sunsets, flowers, green fields, blossoming trees, singing birds, and quiet streams fill our hearts with such ineffable joy ?

It might seem obvious for some, but my intense love and need for nature is still a great mystery, one that even evolutionary biologists would be hard-pressed to explain. After all, what is the utility in admiring a sunset, or delighting at the breeze blowing tree limbs and leaves, when it serves no evolutionary purpose? I suppose I could use reason to find a semblance of an ordered idea, but there is something beyond this limited language and consciousness that nature holds. Evolution and science can explain many facts of our daily existence, yet the answer to this profound puzzle lies beyond the reaches of present day science.

How is it that nature, in my breath, is trying to teach me to see the sacred in the mundane and the profound in the prosaic? In the preface to "The Forest Unseen", David Haskell reminded me that more than two centuries ago William Blake offered up the most extraordinary of possibilities in his poem "Auguries of Innocence". “To see a world in a grain of sand. And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.”

Unfortunately, most of us don't know how to hold eternity in the palm of our hands.Maybe David Haskell can and has come as close to it as anyone, but I know I normally can't. To be honest, I feel lucky if I can just hold it together until the end of the day. I attribute that mostly to most of us having lost our minds.  And I mean that literally. Our attention is endlessly lost in the endless blur of appointments, to-do lists, responsibilities, worries, should have's, could have's, concerns and agitation that makes up our glorious and sophisticated modern lives.

There are times,though, that for just the briefest moment, we do pick up a vibration or sense that there is something more going on than this monotonous daily round of survival. But, unfortunately, those moments are too few and far between; those glimpses of clarity into the world pass only to see the waves of mundane urgency swallow us again. Tumbling through the chaos of our day-to-day repetitions, I wonder if Blake's vision of a broader, more expansive experience is nothing more than a poet's quixotic dream. Can we really see the Universe in a grain of sand, even as we slog through interminable traffic? Can we really hold infinity in our hands, even as we go shopping, drop off the mail, pay our bills, clean the dishes, do the laundry or search through Face Book?

When I sit quietly with my breath in nature, it seems to me that we can. The connection between the everyday realities we experience and boundless landscapes of cosmic beauty, inspiration and joy found in the flowers, sunsets and trees surrounding me is actually so close, so present for us all. I feel like they are there in everything we come into contact with:the dried fish food flakes stuck to the aquarium, the dust and pollen on my car, the mess on my desk and the dirty dish water in my sink.

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What Shenley park has told me in my breath is that the key is in the noticing and that happens by  living and not necessarily answering the question hidden in Blake's poem. Can we really see the whole world in a grain of sand?

Through the lens of stillness and the breath, I can begin to recognize how even the smallest things surrounding me like a snail’s slow persistent meandering, a blooming flower, darting squirrel, regal red cardinal, broken tree branch or torn patch of grass can be a gateway to an experience of the extraordinary, if only we can practice noticing.

We walk and look past a thousand natural miracles every day, from the purple sun's descent in the sky to the arc of birds seen chasing each other in joyous flight. Those miracles are there waiting for us to see them, to notice them and, most importantly, to find our delight in them.

For anyone looking for a little transcendence, I recommend that they go on up to Flagstaff Hill and breathe.