The falling leaves

Yesterday evening DC and I saw The Father, a play by Florian Zeller at the People's Theatre. Although an amateur production the performances were good and the experience in no way felt amateur. No small feat given the nature of the play. With no consistent narrative position we experience the unfolding story of an elderly man with dementia. The uncertainty of 'reality', his decline from robust demeanour to second childhood and the frightening isolation as his awareness no longer holds a coherent picture of the world or even himself is played out in an ever shifting field. Time, place and relationship constantly fail to join up into a coherent linearity. The sequence of past present and future as the temporal backdrop to the physically apparent world fragments. The who is who of the people in his life fragments. The where is where fragments... His closing lines 'my leaves are falling away, my branches are falling away' leaves us asking the same question he has just asked '...but what about me... who am I?'

And so it seems fitting to remember the title of this blog - for who is holding on to what? Who is it that might ever hold on to nothing, to be with what is, as it is? Inspired by the koan (Case 5 Mumonkan) at a time when I was recovering 'myself' after my sense of who I was had been, if not shattered then certainly knocked about a bit by an anxious depression caused by long term stress, this blog aimed to capture some movement into a wider sense of being. And what I sought was a place where I could be alive to life without again being overwhelmed by any pain it could cause me. Even to the extent that the very notion of 'me' was to be kept under scrutiny. And I was all too aware of the danger in this! I kept it reasonably soft... the grasping in this was clear to me and I fumbled my way through the dharma... So, the years have passed and what might I say now in answer to the question - who sits? I've no idea! And I don't mean that in an elliptical or 'knowing' way. It really is a mystery. But it is a mystery sitting in a coherent consensus reality. I'm not dementing. (As far as I can tell.) What and how do we know the nature of ourselves to be?

Meanwhile, the play reminds us of the last days of DC's father and the increasing fragility of my parents. We are aware of the passage of time and the movement through the seven ages as we cast about the stage of our lives, interconnected and separate as they are, in this unfathomable and yet obvious paradox.

The Father is a moving play and the theme of loss and death resonated all the more strongly as we spoke with the director. We know him and his wife through other friends and we acknowledged the sadness in the unfolding falling away that accompanies the last days of life. And as we all agreed it's shit. The loss of function and the physical pain taking up the time before death, squeezing the precious remaining moments of connection. It IS shit. And as family and friends gather and share, as the days pass, there is that which has been and that which remains.

The merit of this post is for those approaching the end of their life and all who love them.

This September

 It is a time of transition. Mid September brings a mellowness and a sense of impending stillness. There is much change going on in the world and in our own tiny corner of existence DC and I are soon to move house. For a variety of reasons I find floating through my mind consideration of... Of what? Of appreciation of the challenges, changes and stillness... the spiritual 'journey'... Elliot's words 'costing not less than everything'... Recent years have been very challenging and I have often lost sight of the stillness in which the motion of the challenge takes place. Returning to the desire to reach both a place of safety  and insight whilst releasing any such imagined position into the reality of the present ever unfolding moment there is reflection.

Surrendering to the moment with an open heart and mind doesn't seem to be a natural disposition for me. My mind is constantly grasping for control. Yet there is seeing this without adding too much further. Over the passing years since first coming across the Buddha dharma, understanding, appreciation, and much more have naturally shifted. The picture of a spiral is often used to describe 'views up the mountain'. But whilst useful this reinforces the notion of a journey with the attendant risk of an asymptotic goal. In practice there is both the need to keep 'polishing the mirror' and to realise reality in the present. Certainly much of that reality now is tiredness. Hopefully the coming transition will afford rest and renewal. And in that there may yet be more clarity and peace.

 I suppose that implicit in all this is the koan at its most basic. The panoply of challenges each encompassing various wants and needs, the access to wisdom at both intellectual and visceral levels- the being and doing in each moment. And how aware, how conscious am I in all this? Indeed where am I in all this? I hope the coming autumn will afford opportunity to feel into all this.