The past many months a couple of phrases or concepts have lingered in my mind as I look around me and wonder at the beauty and ugliness of the positions we occupy on the planet. One is the Hindu idea of "darshan" in which you pay respect to a sacred place - a peak, a river, a tree, perhaps. When I see a sunrise or sunset, or stop to admire a tree in bloom, that is some kind of darshan, I think. Another phrase is "just passing through" to sum up the attitude of impermanence; of accepting that one can't own or hold or control something indefinitely and so it makes sense to keep a loose grip on the material parts of your life and to "store up your treasures in heaven" rather than among Earthly things. A third idea that comes to the front of my mind from time to time is "helder" a Dutch or Germanic word for bright shining, silvery luminousness that sometimes comes around the time of rising or setting sun when the rays are reflecting off the many surfaces high and low, surrounding you is lightness. By extending that feeling to lightness of emotion, free of burden or obligations there is a brightness in one's heart or outlook that results. The fourth term that wells up in me sometimes stems from the quote attributed to John Lennon, that "Life is what happens while you are busy doing something else." In other words, we may believe that the point in life or the purpose one is striving to achieve is one thing, but only later on in retrospect, or when someone reframes the events in a new light do we recognize what is most of value in the flow of time; consumerism gives us a "head fake" that makes us lean to the right, while the true direction to pay attention to might be just the opposite to what we are in the habit of assuming or accepting.
All four of these together add up to a hyperawareness of time's passing ("...merrily, merrily, merrily - life is but a dream," as the nursery song puts it) and the importance of seeking and conserving was matters most and then sharing that with others on the road of life.
