Walking up the Waterfall

For a while a buzzard has flown down from the nearby trees to stand in the field next to the cottage in which we are currently living.  It stands for some time surrounded by green shoots and surveys the world with sharp inclinations of its head; occasionally it will heavily hop a metre or two to take up a new position.  I have not been able to watch it for all the time that it has been there, but I have, once or twice, seen it lift itself off the ground and with a few strong sweeps of its wings take its next existence back in the trees.  Is it looking for food potential?  Is it just watching?  What does it see from the ground that it cannot see from the trees?  To watch this bird, indeed to watch any living creature, is to connect to a world that is beyond words.

The human being is born into the wild, the uncontrolled; born into fragility; and born into the extraordinary potential that is life.  Unfortunately, much of this life is spent in denial and in direct conflict with all that connects us with that which is more than our individual and collective selves.  As human beings we are nature, indivisible from the animals, plants, and all living things on this earth.  When we die we return to the unknown and our deaths are no different to that of the fly, the elephant, the fish or any other living creature.  So why do we educate our children in enormous regimented mechanical factories?  Why do we create vast towering blocks for people to live in amongst the pollution in the cities?  Why do we produce food that has little or no nutritional value, involves the killing of animals on an industrial scale and the pumping of chemicals into their bodies?  Why have we made the pursuit of money the root of our existence?  Where is it leading to…?  Where are we going…?

So walk up the waterfall with a heart that bangs in the chest almost to breaking.  Watch with care the slight movement beneath the glassy water where the bird is about to rise.  Feel the soft rain fall and the bite of the cold on your cheeks.  In watching life, can you also observe your separation?  Can you see how you have been taught that it is all to be about you?  And how that prevents you seeing. 

The snow on the mountains cuts into the cracks and feels for the solid base to gather and stretch.  Blasts of wind take flesh and bone and play at throwing it down the hill – a good game!  If taken solely with sedentary logic and the pontification of the armchair, then your skeleton will gather dust in a room with no windows.  And the light of the slow revolution is appearing now through the spaces in the floorboards whilst the awful, destructive sense of those in authority is creeping like suffocating smoke into your thinking. 

You may be dividing yourself from others through sex, through age, through your cleverness – climbing the ladder of superiority; but you cannot hear the song, see the colours, feel the joy and touch the pain.  You are lost and already dead.  Others may also be lost, but they vibrate with a life that has come knocking unexpectedly at their door.

The buzzard is there again today.  It is cold and it shakes its feathers against the chill wind.