Nothing taken,
Nothing gained;
The Path goes ever onward.

We enter this life with nothing, and we leave this life with nothing. All of our posessions we must leave behind; our money, our loved ones, our very bodies. It makes very sound practical sense not to be too attached to anything in life. Great masters say to let things be like lizards on a hand - trying to grab them will only cause them to run away. None of this means don’t have possessions, or don’t have loved ones, or don’t create or achieve anything. On the contrary, we can have great fun with those things, they bring meaning to our lives, they are what life is all about: expression, love, creation, action. The physical world is here for us to interact with, we are physical creatures, so a balanced life is one of embracing physicality as well as emotional, mental and spiritual levels of life.

Life is there to be lived, regardless of its length or permanence. When ours comes to an end, why would we want to be holding on to something beyond our power to hold on to? Each moment can be practice for the moment of death, because each moment is life and death in itself. Letting go graciously at the end of life, content that though we have taken nothing and gained nothing, we can be at peace because it is enough just to have lived.

A thought occurred to me today. When considering awareness, we can be one-pointed, completely aware and concentrating on one single thing. Often that is the way of our focus, reflected in our mind [concentrating on the one task] and in physicality [looking with narrow vision to a small specific area]. But what happens when we decide to bring something else into awareness as well? If there are two things instead of one, have we split our awareness in half, so we become only half-aware of each? Sometimes, perhaps even most of the time, yes, that is what happens. But looking closer at that, it seems to me that we flit from one thing to the other, back and forth. It takes us a little while to get our bearings each time we change focus, and as we are still technically only concentrating on one thing at a time, much of what happens elsewhere gets lost. There is, however, another way.

Rather than split awareness between two things, why not engulf those two things in your awareness? That way, awareness deepens to include more and more things, without splitting it. It isn’t one thing 100%, 2 things 50% each, 4 things 25% each… it’s one thing 100%, 2 things 100%, 4 things 100%…

Wait, is my maths right there? Haven’t I drifted into 200%’s and 400%’s, technical paradoxes which say 200 out of 100 or 400 out of 100? Perhaps logic alone can’t explain it, or perhaps I’ve just used logic poorly in an attempt to explain.

Regardless, the point I am trying to illustrate is that awareness is not some static thing. There is no limit to what you can put into your awareness, or rest your awareness on, or make one with your awareness [my awareness, you say? Who is this me you are talking about?]. Awareness can be deepened indefinitely, and that’s just what I suggest you join with me in practicing.

Hark!
The bird -
It sings!

If we are keenly attentive, we might notice many of the opportunities that we are offered each day for resting our attention in the moment. When something catches your attention (and as long as it is safe to do so), really stick with it. Don’t be tempted to analyse it or tell yourself that it’s only a bird, or a car, or whatever, as if by saying what it is you no longer need to pay attention to it. Really attend to it. Let it deepen your awareness and your experience of the moment. If the bird is singing, really hear it. If the cars are rushing past, really listen to the roar of those engines. For most of us with our emphasis on sight, paying attention to sound can really open our minds to experiencing the moment fully.

Be like the child who has just learned to cross the road:

Stop. Look. Listen.

Ice breaks,
Rivers flow;
The sea consumes all.

Each drop of water may be separate, but it will always return to its source. Rains fall, waters evaporate, rivers flow from melted ice atop mountains down to merge with the sea. This is the way of things.

In life we may divide and separate things into this and that, or here and there, but it is a mistake to think that there is any reality in those divisions. Light and dark may seem to be separate, but what if there was no light, could dark then exist? Darkness is the absense of light, so if light does not exist, how can we define darkness?

We could go round in circles with these kinds of reasonings, but there really is no need. Separate or not, manifest or not, what is individual will become collective, and what is collective will become into individual. Sound comes from Silence and then returns to Silence, and so do we. From the Void all things come, and to the Void all things must return.

Those of you keeping up-to-date with this blog here will have read a little about my webcomic, The Thinkings & Imaginings of Questor & Viagron. After a few months break from it, when I thought it was finished with, they tugged at me to be drawn again, and before I knew it I had some more comic strips to share with you. I posted them initially here, as I didn’t have anywhere else to put them, but I’ve now created a place for them in their very own website, able to be viewed as a blog much like this one, with date orientated postings, and also by RSS feed for those who like to have new postings come to them directly rather than have to visit the site themselves. I’ve thus moved the postings that were here to the new site, so if you were looking for them you can find them at the new location. However, where I think it is appropriate and relevant, I may well be posting some of the cartoons here as well, when they are especially profound, such as in the case of Issue #204: Super Galactic Oneness.

Enjoy your new home boys, may you get many visits and have many fine adventures.

We may think that what we have built will endure. There is civilisation here, with buildings, roads, and concreted paths. There are stone structures, wooden structures, and metal structures. We have shaped our world, and we have created our society. We may think that what we have achieved will last forever, and that it will have meaning.

In truth, there have been civilisations before this one; buildings and paths and tools and objects built and shaped by man thousands of years ago, and these have not endured, these have risen and fallen, and been consumed back into the earth. We might be surprised at how quickly the earth will reclaim our world when we are gone and no longer care for our creations and possessions. The desert reclaims, the grass and the weeds and the plants reclaim, the bugs and the insects and the animals reclaim. Cracks appear in the concrete, moss grows on the mat, and like civilisations before ours, this will not last. We will not last.

But we need not be concerned. If things endured forever, we would know only constancy and stagnation. As things change, we may at least find those changes interesting. For things to be always fresh and new, that is the greatest gift of all.

“Everything fleeting; the world is renewed.”

Do you have regrets? You may think on them, turning them over and over in your mind.

“If only I had done this…” you say.

What resolution will you find by thinking? You think you have done wrong, your actions wrong or not good enough. Judgement is where regret is found, and you keep the pain it causes alive by reminding yourself again and again of your failure, of your less-than-perfect action.

There is no solving it. Maybe it was good this happened, maybe not. Maybe if you had done things differently it would have been better, but maybe not. You cannot know, so why carry around such a burden?

“Ah, but I keep it lest I forget my mistake and make it again,” you say.

Can learning not take place without regret? It is the self-punishment of regret that serves no purpose; realizing we have made a mistake and remembering it so that we learn and do not repeat it is not regret, it is wisdom. We may not even call such a thing a mistake - it is only a relative term.

To live with no regrets is to live in the place where judgement cannot find a foothold, and that place is this moment, here and now. Regrets have no place in the Timeless - they cannot exist without a past and future - and so that place is where we we can find peace. In the words of a bright young sage wannabe (that is, me):

“Regrets are not resolved, they are transcended.”