Light on the Page

Cycles of Rebirth

We tend to think that youth turns the world’s wheel – that it makes things happen, sets the agenda – while age controls, fossilizes and limits. This is to ignore the fact that when everything’s been done that can be done, all experience gained, the self is still there, listening, wondering. It’s beyond the question ‘why’ – it sits, as it were, like an old man at the edge of the world, humming his song beneath a lemon sky. In other words, the self is neither old not young but – eventually – takes up a position on the outer rim of experience in hope and expectation of something greater than age and youth. After all, the world – this wheel or globe – is by definition young. By virtue of its motion, every day is new. No two experiences can ever be the same. Yet something set it in motion – something keeps it in motion.

I suggest that that ‘something’ is of the same nature as the self which sits – in its maturity – at the edge of the world, where the night is as thick as cream. There is no telling what that darkness comprehends. Whereas life is short, the earth is finite and the universe has a beginning, the self with its ear pressed to the dark knows itself to be as ageless and timeless as what started the cycle moving. Therefore there is also the point at which life, the universe and experience has its ending. It’s possible to imagine yourself in this way, as a silent point with the great wheels of existence circling around you. Where are youth and age then? In reality the ages pull youth to the earth with a thud, not just to gain experience, but in order to be, or to become what it already is. Thus, what the eastern religions describe as the cycles of rebirth – and you can take that in whatever way makes sense to you – really amounts to a process of pulling yourself forth from the darkness. I’m inclined to say that moments of enlightenment or awakening don’t really exist – only the gradual establishing of what you are in your own nature. And what is the darkness? The greatest magnitude of light that can possibly be imagined.

Old Man

At the edge of the world an old man sits,

humming his song beneath a lemon sky -

the earth is too young for him, nothing fits,

he’s gone too far beyond the question why.

But the night is thick as cream, smooth and round,

there is no telling what it comprehends -

the old man cries for what he has not found

and prays for every increase darkness sends.

Thud

And if that darkness should become alive,

how much more than memory it would hold -

the teeming contents of this life might strive

to be more than a minute can unfold.

A night of silence fills a cosmos full,

a bustling day leaves its tracks in the mud -

an old man declares that the ages pull

innocent youth to the earth with a thud.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

You can also find me on:  Evolver  and  PageLight 

(Picture: Philosopher in Meditation – Rembrandt)

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