reflection: appreciation

Here in this world where we live everything has substance, texture. I am in the place where the event happens, contact is made, wind exchanged. I came to from a vast emptiness, a womb of no dimension and no boundary, eyes shocked by the light and lungs gulping. This is where everything I know became possible. This is where you are, so what choice did I have but to come here?

I have lived well, attending to the details of being attended to. I expand and contract. My feet have thick, old calluses. My face and back and chest are pitted. My vital organs have aged and mastered their relationships. This is mine and I know it. I am of the nature to decay. I have not got beyond decay. I am of the nature to be diseased. I have not got beyond disease. I am of the nature to die. I have not got beyond death. All that is mine, beloved and pleasing, will change and vanish. In this way, every day, I appreciate.

I don't need to understand because that is just one thing of many. In the way a child calls "Mother", I am made less lonely. When I was young I dug in the dirt with my fingers. Holes and paths, caves and forts; black strips on my finger tips where the nails filled with earth. I can smell the sun on the ground under the bushes where the plastic army men fought and regrouped and bivouacked. The knees tore and the laces broke. Mom fretted at the grass stains. Laying on the lawn we looked at the blue and the clouds and talked about the things they meant. Then she kissed me, and I brushed her cheek and neck with my soft hand. This is the lower part of me, and through it we connect.

This is what I offer back to understanding's highest emptiness, so it can be touched. I am the owner of my kamma, heir to my kamma, born of my kamma, related to my kamma, abide supported by my kamma. Whatever kamma I shall do, whether good or evil, of that I shall be the heir. This is life. This is my contribution, my offering, my appreciation.