July 15, 2013

Alice Walker writes about many good things and always speaks from the heart. Here's what I read tonight, under a quarter moon setting into the Gulf of Mexico, with drops of an earlier rain still falling from pine needles overhead.

All of us on this Earth are exactly who we have been waiting for. It is for us to change the direction of the planet and we must not lose our belief that we can do so. 

From Human Sunrise: A Letter to the Graduating Class of Naropa University, June 2009

I can't help but wonder, on this beautiful night, so wet that I can hear the plants growing, that she was right. We are a new people, one growing into biosphere consciousness, a generation who treasure wisdom - of the ancients, of indigenous people, and of contemporary wise men and women like Alice Walker -  a new generation of joyful people who value peace, who recognize the need for equality. We reach back to the wisdom of our forefathers who gave us the concept that all are created equal, and we embrace the understanding of our indigenous elders that we are but a part of creation, and with deep respect we acknowledge that all living things and the earth itself are to be treasured. 

I have always aligned with Taoist philosophy. My mentor Share K. Lew was of a traditional temple in Canton, a place of kung fu monks, sacred warriors with gentle souls and farmers hands. He passed in 2012. I arranged for Chinese friends in Guangzhou to make the pilgrimage to his temple and on an auspicious day according to Chinese astrology, to hold ceremony with the remaining monks at his former temple. I have even been to the westernmost gate in the mountains of Szechuan Province where legend has it that the guard requested he not pass (in to Tibet) until he leave his teachings in writing. I mediated on the spot where he supposedly wrote the Tao Te Ching. 

Practicing Qi Gong in Southern China

The hills were as if alive, a wood of tangible peace and sacred silence. I didn't want to leave. The wooden gate was simple, worn, replaced so many times over so many thousand years - and yet, to me, it was the same as when he was on his way to leave his present for another presence. 

Share K. Lew repeatedly taught me that the Tao was to be lived, not talked about. The way to live it, he suggested, was to "follow nature." I've had no insights, but I've been learning. Perhaps unlearning is a better way to put it: as I let go, nature comes with such synchronicity, simple yet elegant: a Sandhill crane with ruby head cap, an Everglades kite pausing directly overhead so close I can see it's eye turn down to look at me, a redtail hawk gliding on to a branch in the tall pines in my garden. 

Sife Lew at his temple on Luo Fu Shan

Find those moments, as Alice Walker advises in her letter, those brief infinities, and rise and join together and plan ways to protect the earth and all creatures, and each other. Make peace with your life so you can free up all your creative energy to provide for the great challenges of this age. 

Thanks so much to inspiring writers like Alice Walker and to my enigmatic Taoist mentor, Sifu Share K Lew, and to all living beings.