SKYMIND

A few days ago I saw the first blooming daffodil out on my kitchen patio. Just recently I had noticed the intrepid green stems pushing through the dry wintery earth. And now here it is – the full yellow blossom in all its glory, opening its bell-like face to the uncertain spring blue sky. I have a particular fondness for the daffodil, herald of spring. The first daffodil of the season bloomed on the day of our youngest son Milan’s birth – a cool, overcast Thursday in April. Or the vivid memory of being small, maybe 6 or 7 years old: getting up early one weekend morning and walking over to the small bouquet of daffodils on the kitchen table. As I leaned up close I heard the faint sound of bells emanating from their open blossoms, as though the spring fairies were tiptoeing into our world in their jingling slippers. In all its simplicity, the daffodil reminds me of the magic of our world.

At times, however, I’ve also felt a kind of melancholic despair at the sight of spring returning. An  inner voice says: Don’t the plants know that in a few short months all these green leaves will turn brown, dry up and fall back to the ground? Why this continuous attempt at starting over if we all know where it’s headed – back to naked branches and bare, dry earth? Luckily, nature does not think linearly – there is no endpoint, no final goal that we either reach or miss. The point is always to show up absolutely as we are, as it is – at times retreating into the quiet pause of winter, at others expanding into the luscious generosity of summer’s ripe peach. And then there’s the daffodil – holding in its potent subterranean bulb the ineffable knowing of the unending cycle of arising and falling away. And still the daffodil strikes out, rises up, throwing open its petals – yellow, brilliant, courageous in its innocence. A fresh start.

There’s a beautiful dharmic reminder I see in this fresh start. So often in our lives, we may feel weighted by the impact of what we have done or not done, the karmic tangles of our history, our patterns, our ingrained modes of reaction. Just like my melancholic weariness with the ceaseless turning of the seasons, we may sense we’ve seen it all before. We know how others will behave; we know how we’ll respond; we know how it’ll turn out, time and time again.

But within this seemingly never-ending wheel (traditionally called samsara) there lies the always present wakefulness of awareness. In any moment, we can actually attune to the clarity of our own mind, the brilliant depth of our own heart. What holds the rising and falling? What holds the daffodil, the ripe peach, the dried leaves of fall? What holds our thoughts in all their busyness, stuckness, insightfulness? It is awareness itself; it is the very ground of being which, like a primordial mother, holds all things, unconditionally.

And because this primordial awareness, this ground of being – vast, endless in potential, all-encompassing – is ceaseless, without beginning or end, it is always present. It is always already here. Like poking through the dense clouds of a thunderstorm into the wide open, endless blue skies, we are invited to wake up within the fog of our thinking into the unencumbered nature of our own potent, luminous heart-mind.

You might stop right now – look inside. Glimpse the awareness that holds whatever thoughts are coursing through your mind. Notice the wakefulness that allows you to see what you see, hear what you hear, think what you think. Rest for a moment in that wakefulness, in that light of awareness itself.

We don’t manufacture this wakefulness; it’s always already there. All we need to do is recognize it, rest in it – even if only for a moment. The beauty of awareness is that it’s always there; if we miss it one moment, we are invited again to meet it now. And now. And now.

And so every moment in our lives – even the moment of death – is an invitation to meet our innate wakefulness, our awakened heart-mind, our true ceaseless nature. Every moment is a fresh start. It’s never too late. We’ve never missed the boat.

The courage of the ordinary daffodil is to claim aliveness, to proclaim beauty. It’s the courage of starting afresh, not because we’ve finally figured it all out, but because life invites us – moment after moment – to meet the brilliant aliveness of our being, just as we are. Just now.