Like A White Colt
“Man’s life between heaven and earth
is like a white colt
passing through a narrow opening in a wall:
in a moment it is suddenly over.
With striving, all things hurtle into life.
Calmly and silently all things pass away.
Undergoing change they are born,
and by another change
they die.
Living things are saddened
and all men lament, but it is only removal
of the bow from its sheath
and emptying the natural container.
The soul departs, bewildered and dazed,
and the body follows.
This is the Great Returning.
“That the corporeal comes from the incorporeal
and return to the incorporeal
–this is what all men know in common;
This is what all men discuss
but this is
not what is sought
by those who have attained the tao.
Zhuangzi by Zhuang Zhou, trans. by Hyunn Höchsmann and Yang Guorong, Book 22 Knowledge Wanders in the North
It is Friday. In the Midwest, a mid-winter day is warmer, a tease of spring. I will not resist this feeling of excitement. What will change of season from winter ice, from the somber greys and tan of old vegetation and dark skies — to a warming earth, bring? Spring is as if everything renews for the very first time. At least the child in me has such a view of the matter.
The quoted lines attract by the elegant simplicity of expression: a white colt gallops past a breached wall. You don’t control the horse. You have no “slo-mo” button to dilate the time. You just appreciate the momentary experience, and___________ . What more can be said?
Certainly you may consider additional metaphors, such as the bow removed from its sheath… In any case from the anthropocentric POV this is the Great Return. A one-of-a-kind variant, a distinct personality emerges (at birth) is formed, matures, declines and departs. A life-force is formed, and returns. One single magnificent movement, really.
Talking, just puts me at a distance from appreciating the feeling of that white colt…
A song, a song that we all can sing! Here it is, Bonnie Raitt covers Angel From Montgomery by John Prine.
2 thoughts on “Like A White Colt”
Everything in life is ephemeral, temporary, transient. Even the air we breathe and the dirt beneath our feet has a beginning and an end. The fruit fly only lives for 24 hours, but to the fly that is a lifetime. The earth was born 4.5 billion years ago and has another 2 to 3 billion years left before eventually being swallowed by a bloating sun. In many ways there is very little difference between the fruit fly and our planet despite the perceived length of time from birth to death.
For whatever reason I feel a sense of melancholia sweep over me whenever I consider the juxtaposition of the existence of these various entities, which includes our own impermanent journey through life. I want to know why the vast majority of humans don’t appear to understand the importance of bringing joy into our brief foray into consciousness and do whatever we can to be kind and generous to others during our time on Earth. I try to wrap my mind around the prevalence of greed and lust for power, but it never ever makes any sense, especially when viewed in the context of how the shortness of our lives.
I highly doubt if I will find the answers to these ponderings about life before I expire. As has been noted many, many times, the minds of humans are flawed and we cannot seem to rectify these problems to garner a greater understanding of our place within the larger scheme of the universe. It’s just that we are who we are.
Why do not many of us understand the importance of bringing joy? Ignorance, the spiritual cancer cripples our spirits. Americans are particularly vulnerable since ignorance and capitalism are our holy divinities.
Perhaps the fruit fly does have a proportionately long life as a human. It is unlikely to self reflect and obsess about its mortality. We, on the other hand have a great deal of difficulty to simply just live.
We could say that death is a particular natural consequence of what we do to ourselves.
We just keep spinning the cylinder, our display of machismo and the darkness will come.