Let go. “All forms arise and all forms fade,” taught the Buddha. Embracing the inherent impermanence of forms
is the work of all who would be wise. Autumn
wastes no time on subtlety, loosening the dry leaves from the trees with
callous abandon, tossing them to the street where they flow in long rivers of
red, gold and amber, clattering like bones, gathering in eddies against walls
where they slowly turn to dust and slip back into the soil. We see the sky anew through the bare branches
and feel in our gut its infinite reach. We come to know that in our lives too everything we have built,
cultivated, nurtured and grown will come to an end and be taken from us – a slow
fade followed by a sudden gust. Renunciation or letting go is the hardest lesson to learn. We understand it intellectually, but to
actually do it? Nothing requires more
courage. But in the low light of autumn,
we see from a fresh angle the inevitability of change and loss, and we choose
to say yes.
Be Grateful. Fall helps us shift away from the agitation
of grief and toward the serenity of gratitude. We see how graciously the earth releases its
grasp on the forms of summer and allows the withering to begin. We know that we don’t own any of this, all of
it is borrowed, and the tighter we cling and grasp, the more painful the
separation. Loss is certain. Our only choice is to grasp or release. We set the tone. Will our losses be graceful or
wrenching? Instead of clinging and
craving, we choose the consciousness of gratitude, the open-hearted joy that we
even got to touch any of it, that we had these hands to hold, these eyes to see,
this beautiful laughter, that afternoon when we walked on the beach and finally
had the chance to say those important things to each other, these sweet late
summer peaches, the blue moon of August rising through the pines, all of it a
gift, none of it ours to keep. In the
face of this great and ongoing loss, the only sane stance is deep and boundless
gratitude for the infinite generosity of our lives.
This is beauty too. Beauty isn’t just the flowers of spring or
the green fields of summer. This tawny
grass and the brown ferns and the bare trees of autumn hold their own beauty –
empty, clear, simple, provocative, pure in form and deep as the ocean. Holding the spotted, wrinkled hands of our
elders, wiping the drool away from the mouths of the dying, carrying our old
dogs that can no longer walk out to the car for that last ride to the vet, the
pale distance in the eyes that no longer see us or know our voice, this is
beauty too. One of my favorite memories
of my father, the last time I saw him at his house, was the day I shaved him
out on the patio. He sat quietly in a
chair and jutted out his chin as I ran the electric razor over his sunken
cheeks and the loose skin of his neck. At 90 he no longer fit the youthful stereotype of beauty. But I saw an amazing man there behind the fog
of his Alzheimer’s and the veil of his grizzled face and wrinkled skin. Autumn shows us that there is beauty in every
stage of form, from conception to dissolution. Why should one moment be more valuable than any other? Every moment is a window into the infinite,
and the infinite is the source of all beauty.
Nothing ends. “There never was a time when you did not
exist, nor will there ever be a time when you cease to exist,” said Krishna in
the Bhagavad Gita. In the perennial philosophy there is a deep
and unshakable conviction that while outer forms come and go our essential
nature is timeless. As Eckhart Tolle
wrote in Stillness Speaks, “Death is
not the opposite of life. The opposite
of death is birth. Life has no
opposite.” And Joseph Campbell asks,
“Are we the light bulb? Or are we the
light, of which the bulb is a vehicle?” All
around us the Grim Reaper takes his harvest, but Life itself is unharmed, and is
in fact served by the pruning, just as a rose bush blooms best in spring if
last year’s dead wood is removed. Flowers
blossom and fade, but the rose goes on.
Returning to our roots. As the brash colors of summer seep from the
world leaving a hundred hues of beige and grey, life’s essence slips beneath
the surface. Plants and trees withdraw
their energy and settle down into their roots. No longer outward turned, we too go within and touch that sacred center
from which we and all things come. Tending to the source means leaving aside our busy lives and growing
quiet, trusting the world to carry on without us – we won’t be missed as much
as our egos think we’ll be. This is the
paradox inherent in the deep realization that we are at once nothing and
everything. The quiet music of our
eternal nature is easily drowned out by the noise of the world. But inward turned, we gradually hear the one
song of the universe playing in us, through us, as us. To be liberated and returned to one’s
essential nature is the yearning of every soul, and only in the stillness of
autumn can we feel in our hearts this ancient longing, and heed its gentle
pull. As we learn to be still, we return
to our authentic being, what Zen Buddhism calls our Original Self. It is a sacred homecoming of healing and
restitution.
The joy of surrendering. Autumn is commonly met with melancholy. This needn’t be. Only from the perspective of
spring and summer does autumn seem sad. From
the still point at the center of the circle, each season has its place in the
great turning, and is in itself a celebration of the whole. Autumn is a time of freedom. It is joyful to be free of the old forms that
encased us. It is delightful to walk on
unencumbered, beholden only to the yearning in our heart for what’s next. So insidious is the process of attachment
that we never realize how heavy our load is until it is taken from us. As the Zen saying goes, “How refreshing, the
whinny of a packhorse unburdened of everything.” With open hands and open hearts we walk on,
grateful for the blossoming of spring, the bounty of summer, the liberation of
fall and the restoration of winter, knowing in our bones that each season is a
stage in a great and infinite unfolding. This is the wisdom that each of the seasons gives us. This is the secret for which we have so long
toiled. These are the best days of our
lives. These are the hours of our
amazement. This is the moment of our
awakening. We are grateful, and head
over heels in love with every drop of rain, every budding branch, every falling
leaf and every flake of snow. We stand
in the center of it all and say yes.
