Happy and Harmless

"We are all fellow human beings who find ourselves here in the world as it was when we were born. We find war, murder, torture, rape, domestic violence and corruption to be endemic ... we notice that it is intrinsic to the human condition ... we set out to discover why this is so. We find sadness, loneliness, sorrow, grief, depression and suicide to be a global incidence – we gather that it is also inherent to the human condition – and we want to know why. We all report to each other as to the nature of our discoveries for we are all well-meaning and seek to find a way out of this mess that we have landed in. Whether one believes in re-incarnation or not, we are all living this particular life for the very first time, and we wish to make sense of it. It is a challenge and the adventure of a life-time to enquire and to uncover, to seek and to find, to explore and to discover. All this being alive business is actually happening and we are totally involved in living it out ... whether we take the back seat or not, we are all still doing it."

"It is the most stimulating adventure of a lifetime to embark upon a voyage into one’s own psyche. Discovering the source of the Nile or climbing Mount Everest – or whatever physical venture – pales into insignificance when compared to the thrill of finding out about life, the universe, and what it is to be a human being living in the world as-it-is with people as-they-are."

- Richard

I woke up this morning thinking about harmlessness, and a wish for you out there to simply feel good about life.

I sometimes don't know what this blog is all about, but I think one hope was for it to be honest and sincere.

There are trees here, and trees very often bring me a sense of well-being. Trees tend also to be rather harmless for the most part as well.

So, I step out of my house into the cold morning air and sit, typing under the trees and the birdsongs. I look, and I am in a jungle, a green paradise teeming with life. To my left, I look through layers of leaves. Through the leaves of one tree, I see the trunk of the next. Beyond the oaks, I see the orange Madrone trunk reaching up for the sky. Beyond that, more green leaves which fade into a darker backdrop of shaded leaves in the far background - a good 50 yards away. One leave falls from the brighter layer and the contrast of bright green on dark is stunning. What amazes me is that I can't see the soil, and neither can I see sky. Beyond the farthest leaf I can see, lies only more branches trunks and leaves. It is not thick and crowded, but it's not vacant either.

I look in front of me and see a different view. Redwood trees, with their darker needles, and dark wood trunks. In this direction I can see to the ground, the soil in front of me - again about 50 yards away - is covered in decaying leaves from what seems to be a endless California season of regenerative leaf growth. Some branches cross horizontally creating a matrix of intersecting lines.

The oak tree right in front of me looks sad. It's struggling with it's health and looks stunted in it's growth. Short branches peel off of a spindly trunk. The leaves are a rich green color, and they seem to be saying "I'm not done yet."

It's cold and I wonder about the marvelous existence of temperature. To be born not only into three dimensions of space, and also time, with all it's movement, shape, form and colors, but also to have this extra thing we call temperature. Each moment reaches fullness only with it's complimentary temperature. Feeling cold, I feel alive. Feeling warm, I feel alive. In this moment, I am alive.

What would it be to live a day of life without greed, hatred, and delusion? What would it be to live a day of life without the struggle of Good vs. Evil?

What is this strange world?