Just had to check in for a moment to take a look back thus far at this year … quite a different vibe compared to this time of year in 2015.  I can’t help but think that if I had done things a tad differently … listened more closely … my Dad might still be around today.  But, with his passing came a swift, intense road-opening stream of events that, among other things, healed my relationship with Mom in a way I never thought possible. In spite of her health teetering precariously … from recovering from her eighth round of beating cancer to the loss of her husband of 57 years … Mom continues to be the resilient Rock and indomitable spirit that I could only aspire to be when I reach her age. She’s teaching me how to be the proverbial Phoenix reborn from the glowing embers of perceived ruin … just by being herself.

As the Philippine actor/singer James Reid recently wrote:

“It was worth every tear and every smile; every slap and every kiss; every sad and happy memory; it was worth every time I lost you just to find myself back in your arms again. Destiny doesn’t decide everything. It only gives us a little push in the right direction. We decide if it’s worth fighting for; worth waiting for.”

Family is everything.  It’s the Rock, the love-foundation upon which the home-hearth is built.  It’s the safe harbor sought … the peaceful waters that keep you safe from the wild and raucous Oceans of Life.  By going out into the world, going away from the family circle, I found what I was looking for as I simultaneously came back into the society of the family circle.  Love is forever because it exists in this Now.  And, by setting aside pride and stubbornness, acceptance of Love is the ultimate road-opener of Life and living.

Spiritually, the biggest surprise is realizing that this is also the way of the Bodhisattva, in living the Four Truths:

You suffer because you crave, you desire, things.

But, that craving, those desires, are the source of your suffering.

Thus, the Truth about the craving, the desiring … the suffering … is that everything is a thing not in relation to anything else.

And so … the only way to bring an end to the craving, the desiring, is to try not to stop all desire, but only try to stop as much desire as you can stop.

It took Dad’s passing to recall me home … the signal to return from my ascetic existence in Washington State, where I sought out the great silences amongst the trees to aid my vexatious questioning about my spiritual identity … my forced solitude away from family and the material … Hey, it all makes sense to me, now.  In a fashion, I understand Buddha’s lesson:  that the way to liberation is not competitive, but rather it is the path that cannot be followed.  There is no looking for the “right thing to do”, because there is no rule, no doctrine to follow.  You just do “it” because you are it.

Life is strange.  I didn’t start out writing these thoughts to end up here, at this point … but there it is … and I am grateful, so very grateful, for the Grace that allows it all into my heart.  I think that these experiences are part of attaining that state of Nirvana, that “great sigh of relief” as it is translated from the Sanskrit … because I’ve discovered from living this phase in my life that what I really am is “it”, or “that art thou” as is also written in Sanskrit.

I am Home … And so it is.

In La’kech … Gassho … Namaste’ … Aloha … Mabuhay!

 

 

— Lana and her Dad