Thursday 26 March 2015

Soft Hands

I miss Bill Lawry. Growing up in the 1980s, Lawry and his fellow Australian TV cricket commentators on Channel Nine were as much part of my summer as the heat and long, aimless days. Now, inevitably, age has wearied him to the point he appears only for the Boxing Day test match once a year in his native Melbourne.

Lawry’s excitable manner was a foil for the more emotionally reserved commentators like Ian Chappell and Richie Benaud. Whenever something important happened on the field, like the fall of a wicket, he’d snap out a simple but ebullient response: “Gone! Out! Yes, he’s gone!" An umpiring mistake would elicit, “Dear oh dear, umpire! Dear oh dear!”

One of Lawry’s compliments for a player who had taken a good catch was to declare they had “soft hands”. Of all his commentary, looking back on it, I find it the most interesting. He would say this particularly about a catch taken close to the bat, like in “the slips” when the ball would dart into a nest of waiting fielders.

Soft hands were a prerequisite to field well in cricket – a player had to make sure their hands were not tense or rigid but supple and yielding. You also had to let the ball come to you and not snatch at it, not move too early or too late with your hands but just let the ball fall into them. Someone whose hands were not prepared to receive the ball would likely drop it, which could ultimately mean the difference between their team winning and losing.

Positioning is the other crucial factor on a cricket field. To catch the ball you either have to be in the right position if standing near the batter or be able to move to the right spot once the ball is in the air if you are in the out-field. In the slips, if you stand too close to another fielder you can spoil each other, too far apart and the ball flies between the two of you; stand too far away from the bat and the ball falls in front of you, too close to the bat and the ball is impossible to catch. Being in the right position is critical.

There’s a lot to be said for the wisdom of cricket. We tend to think that our lives need to be forged heroically out of the turbulent mess of existence for us to be successful; that we have to struggle in spite of external conditions to get what we want, elbowing our way in competition with nameless others. I think that’s the wrong notion. The essence of a good life is to be in the right position to receive it and to take it with soft hands.

To be sure, the right position does require work and knowledge. In life, the work is a journey of self-discovery in which the aim is to reach the centre of one’s being. This centre is the source of meaning and goodness in an individual, the inexhaustible fountain from which their life springs. From it all else comes: a purposeful career, relationships, friendships, indeed a whole life’s work. Most of us have to go looking, gaining it through the rigours and knocks of everyday living, through therapy or some kind of internal practice, through self-examination and understanding. We come to know more about our personality and how it can serve this centre. Of course, many of us don’t take the path let alone come close to the goal.

The paradox in the process, as wisdom traditions tell us, is that you arrive where you started – that is, with the personal and universal gifts you had all along. The importance of the journey is actually in the development and refinement of the vehicle that serves the centre, the body and mind that is capable of using the inner gold for its full benefit. To those of us within its radiance for any length of time, being there seems effortless, the grace of the universe natural and boundless. Yet spiritual or ultimate reality cannot be realised in the temporal world without some process of translation; the right position requires no work and yet it needs the effort of Hercules to get there.

Having soft hands is being able to receive the nourishing grace that is the endowment of all created beings. Religious traditions have always had their eye on grace, always sought to build a relationship with the divine light that is the succour of life. We can open to grace through prayer and religious ritual but equally it can be recognised and appreciated in the many ordinary-special moments of each day: in the red-flecked purple clouds of the sky at sunrise, in the smile and joy of a child, in the satisfaction of work done well, in the kindness of strangers. What’s needed is an openness of heart, eyes attentive to the beauty of the world, soft hands.

Sunday 8 March 2015

The Three Phases of Being

It’s kind of obvious, but you notice nature more when you live in the country. That’s been my experience since I moved to central Victoria last year.

Being in the bush, walking or just looking out the window to the grey box-covered hills, you sense nature’s moving through the revolutions of each day and the seasons; the vitality of birds and other animals in the early morning and before sunset; how settled everything is at noon and in the afternoon; how the night brings a new armada of life into the open.

In summer the hills are brown and baked dry – it’s the peak time of insects and lizards but much else has retreated or hunkered down to avoid the heat. Autumn marks the return of green to the land, the respite of moisture and cool air. In winter the rain brings growth, verdant moss and the flourishing of all that is adapted to cold and frost. Spring is the season of abundance, the crowning time of flowers, the period of animal courtship, birth and rearing of young. And onwards again to summer...

In the grand cyclical drama of this little patch of the world, as in life in general, there are three distinct phases. They are: birth, growth and fulfilment.

Birth is the entry of form into the world from the great mystery of nothingness; arrival propelled by a life impulse that is both universal and unique to a particular being. Carried into the world is the history of its species, its predecessors’ physical, energetic and subtle characteristics. As well, each being has its own life and purpose, influenced by the various material circumstances and relationships in which it finds itself. The specific purpose is most easily seen in humans – different people can live vastly different lives according to personality, interests, drives and aspirations – but it is also true in other species. Every blade of grass, every dragonfly and grey box tree is unique, and though most act like others of their species most of the time, subtle differences are important. Evolution requires innovation: a single dragonfly one day flapping its wings differently could eventually have ramifications for its entire species and others in its web of relationships.

Growth is the expansion of form driven by the life impulse. There are different and distinct stages in the growth phase and nothing is required but that the impulse is free to create what it will. Change is constant and at some point the opportunity arises for the intelligence within the form, whatever consciousness is there, to interact with its own vivifying principle. Human will is a prime example of this: at a certain early age we discover our own ego, saying yes to “this” and no to “that”. Over time we make choices and preferences in our lives, directing the energy within us. This also applies more broadly in the universe. We see intelligence in animals and plants as they channel the life impulse within them to adapt and evolve with the conditions around them. And it’s possible to see this in so-called “inanimate” nature. In such things as rivers, rocks, mountains and stars there are discernible stages of birth, growth, middle and old age and numerous ways in which they influence the webs of life of which they are a part. The quality of their life and intelligence may be very different to our own, but we should never be hung up on the human, never see ourselves as the sole template of being. That would be far too narrow.

Fulfilment is the point at which a form has reached its peak and the conclusion of a particular cycle of being. It applies to physical bodies as well as to the more subtle forms of the psyche. Generally speaking, humans reach their physical apex in their late 20s, after which there is gradual decline and ultimately death. But even as the body deteriorates over the years past its physical prime, there may be multiple peaks internally in subtle form; multiple internal births, periods of growth and fulfilment inside one person. The cyclical drama of being occurs within and without. The height of a form is its ultimate power and capability but also the point at which it begins to anticipate its own transcendence, presaging the birth of new form. For example, a person may have reached a deeply fulfilling place in their professional career, or have discovered the joy of bringing up children. These “sweet spot” positions are rarely inhabited long before there is an internal shift towards another place, for transcendence or renewal in some way. There may be little or no external sign of change, yet form is always dynamic, always moving. How a person responds is, of course, up to them. Collective structures and systems follow this pattern too: empires rise and reach their peak, then are faced with renewal or inevitable decline; so too governments, institutions, religions, ideas, modes of thought and action. Whatever is creative and dynamic in a form will find its apogee then dissolve unless new forms are created to hold it. In this process what is most important is the life within the form and not the form itself.

What happens, then, in a situation of stasis or when growth is hobbled or inhibited? The complexity of being is such that when the flow of life is dammed in one place, it appears stronger in another. Bats living in dark caves become blind but evolve extraordinary powers of hearing. A person without the use of their legs develops powerful functioning in their arms. At any blockage life energy is being diverted elsewhere, whether we are aware of this happening or not. Sometimes the blockage is unavoidable or unforeseen, like when restrictions are forced upon us by sudden illness or disability, and what remains is to discover the new directions in which life is flowing and to commit fully to them. In other circumstances the reason for stasis has to be met head-on and its knots undone, otherwise corruption and deadening set in. The dammed energy has to be liberated so that life can go forth fully.

What can be said, then, about decay? There is a natural attrition and also a type of decay which is harmful to the overall spirit of life. The first is the expression of non-being working upon being, the negating principle of the universe acting to dissipate form in order to create new form. The second, the “unnatural”, is the result of human action against the dynamic flow of life. There are many institutions in our time that reek of decline. One could point to the Catholic Church, a monolith with falling authority and power stuck in the values of past centuries. Then there’s the democratic political system, in some places in the world energised and hoped for, in many others foundering on apathy and instability. Perhaps the biggest and most important example in our time of harmful decay is the very relationship that we humans have to our planet. In ages past our self interest of carving a human niche amid the wild fitted because our lives were shorter and we took from the land largely only what we needed. Now, as a result of overpopulation, unchecked industry and technology, we are profoundly changing all life on Earth. We need a new, more evolved consciousness centred on the interrelatedness and interdependence of all things.

With proper attention, decay can be a prompt for action in service of life. Here in central Victoria, as indeed anywhere else, when you inquire with an open mind and heart into nature, a simple truth is revealed over and over again. Through the turning of seasons, the comings and goings of birds, bugs, trees and people, there is an irresistible, inescapable flow that is the essence of all. At times it is breathtaking, at other times – like in the middle of a powerful thunder storm – downright scary, but always new, always fresh and alive. We act appropriately when we return to this life, sensing its movement and helping it on its way.