How do you prevent a drop of water from drying up? …
What do I own? In our textured lives, why do we often talk of disownment? If I don’t own anything, how can I disown anything. We won’t take anything with us when this life ceases, except our karma, but then why do we disown what doesn’t belong to us at the first place? Why do we forget that we will disown our own body one day? And nothing, nothing at all, will mortalize us. At times it seems that the only thing I own is my ignorance and that’s one dark road to enlightenment where I will stand still and shout out loud that “I’m weak”. To be strong or stronger, it’s very important to own something first before even thinking of disowning it. I’m a mere leaf in a storm – without any control. And yet I realize that people who demand control are the same people who are scared to disown because they fear loss or death — aspects on which they have no control.
When I watched this insightful and visually breathtaking (yet slow) film called Samsara (Most Popular Feature Film of 2002 at the Melbourne International Film Festival) a few days back on the suggestion of my dear mate Gautam, I couldn’t come to terms within myself that I can’t disown anything without actually owning it. To disown the material world I have to first live in it – own some of its particles which I breath. And I had to constantly count on the fact that disowning is different from abandoning, where the latter is not redeeming.
Samsara, the Sanskrit and Pali term for “continous movement” or “continuous flowing” refers in Buddhism to the concept of a cycle of birth and consequent decay & death, in which all beings in the universe participate and which can only be escaped through enlightenment. It is generally opposed to nirvana.
I often wonder and talk to friends about “growing up”, “moving on”, “letting go” etc, but my own journey to the “own-disown” yin-yang hasn’t even started.
… by throwing it back into the sea!