Saturday, May 14, 2016

I Have No Parents Revisited


I Have No Parents
I make the heavens and the earth my parents. 
I have no home: 
I make awareness my home. 
I have no life or death: 
I make the tides of breathing my life and death. 
I have no divine power: 
I make honesty my divine power: 
I have no means: 
I make understanding my means. 
I have no magic secrets: 
I make character my magic secret. 
I have no body: 
I make endurance my body. 
I have no eyes: 
I make the flash of lightning my eyes. 
I have no ears: 
I make sensibility my ears. 
I have no limbs: 
I make promptness my limbs. 
I have no strategy: 
I make "unshadowed by thought" my strategy. 
I have no designs: 
I make seizing opportunity by the forelock my design. 
I have no miracles: 
I make right action my miracles. 
I have no principles: 
I make adaptability to all circumstances my principles. 
I have no tactics: 
I make emptiness and fullness my tactics. 
I have no talents: 
I make ready wit my talent. 
I have no friends: 
I make my mind my friend. 
I have no enemy: 
I make carelessness my enemy. 
I have no armour: 
I make benevolence and righteousness my armour. 
I have no castle: 
I make immovable mind my castle. 
I have no sword: 
I make absence of self my sword. 
Anonymous Samurai 
14th Century


When I first read this I was simply enamoured by the images of selfless knights.
Then it reminded me of how disconnected from community and how people can become isolated from those who matter.
Now I reflect on the impermanent and  insubstantial and how in the absence of certainty, a code can light up the darkness and provide a way.

We talk of lessons learned and of ardently following a way or a belief, and of the certainty that is based on experiences past.

But our memories are unreliable.  

We exaggerate the good things and make them better than they were.  We also exaggerate the bad things and make them more onerous and terrible.  

We re-write our memories every time we think through them.  Each visit leaves a mark until only a vestige of what was remains.  

We compare ourselves to shiny mounds of gold and feel poor.  When we compare ourselves to a pile of rusty detritus and we feel rich.  

We are not good at knowing ourselves.

We are like the aging Don Quixote, whose memory of what was has marred his perception of what is until he tilts with windmills and calls them dragons.

We try to follow codes and the codes are based on beliefs which are based on the past and we do not remember with any accuracy what was in the past at all.  

We fervently admonish our students and our children to follow the way, and the intensity of our words is fear based.  It's a fear that is based on the belief that something bad will happen if we repeat the past.   

We want to believe that our life experiences  can be reliable teachers.   But each life experience is a sample size of one.   We cannot rely on a sample size of one.  We cannot rely on memory.  We cannot rely on the memory of our teachers.

But we have codes and we rely on them.  Its a bit of a catch 22.

The best we can do is to have an opinion and to always be prepared to update our opinion. Each experience is fresh then.  There is still a role for codes and beliefs.  There is just no place for dogma.  We cannot afford to be rigid because it is so easy to be wrong.  Our inability to see ourselves clearly is what causes this.  

So all those things, lessons learned, and all those rigid beliefs?  Relax.  We are simply not that smart.  Each moment is a new one.  Each choice is fresh.  We are not burdened by the responsibility of having to be correct.  We take our shots and deal.

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