Samsara

Posted: August 1, 2025 | Author: David | Filed under: Art & Healing, consciousness | Tags: Bardo Thodol, buddhism, samsara, The Work That Reconnects |1 Comment

One bright light has passed, one wise woman who lived at the vanguard.  “A wild love for the wild” she lived and saw this time as “a great unraveling toward a life-generating human society.”

An environmental activist, author and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory and deep ecology, her husband was a Russian scholar and they worked with the CIA in post-war Cold War Germany and then moved to India, where her husband was leading the nascent Peace Corps at the time when the very young Dalai Lama arrived into exile.  A life was lived!

As a practicing Buddhist, she understood that life inherently is filled with suffering, that suffering arises from attachment and desire, but suffering can be overcome.  Her path to the end of suffering became her teaching, which she called, “the Work that Reconnects.”

She has passed, and in the Buddhist tradition, the Bardo Thodol is now her path: “liberation through hearing during the intermediate state.”  Known as “The Tibetan Book of the Dead” this describes the experience of consciousness at the immediate moment of death and the stages to follow during the 49 days of samsara, the “wandering through” between death and rebirth.  

She is now – as I write – at day 11, immersed in the light, while her words speak still to we who remain on planet Earth.  In a recent interview she said:

“I’m 92 now. I am in this 10th decade of my life. When I follow with rapt attention what is happening with the climate catastrophe, and with the mass extinctions of our siblings of in the creation of this world.  I feel that there is, within me a sense that read through Rilke, the translations, and also very much through the work that I have been blessed enough to do called The Work That Reconnects, and that has starts the spiral journey that it is with gratitude. So much gratitude that what’s in it is that we are never abandoned. There is something for us to behold and be part of.

“And to be there, a great moment is there for us to be present. To this incredible moment, we’ve got to realize, we will realize, that we belong to each other. That’s coming forward now.  How could we not harvest that understanding in this moment?”

She continued…

“…this sense of opening to the reciprocity of life. It’s a living world.  When we cannot be sure, or even have the trust, that complex life forms will endure beyond the next few decades, we’re seeing a huge shattering of life itself. And, and yet having been with Rilke, his trust in life is still with me.  So I trust being with life, even though life, the web of life might crumble, but then I’m still with it. I’ll be with it anyway, even in the crumbling. The song is so deep in him.

“For one person to care for another, that is perhaps the most difficult thing required of us. The utmost and final test, the work for which all other work is but a preparation. With our whole being, with all the strength we have gathered, we must learn to love. …As bees gather honey, so do we reap the sweetness from everything and build God.

“Well, it seems clear that we who are alive now are here for something and witnessing something for our planet that has not happened at any time before. And so, we who are alive now and who are called to, who feel called, those of us who feel called to love our world, to love our world has been at the core of every faith tradition, to be grateful for it, to teach ourselves how to see beauty, how to treasure it, how to celebrate, how, if it must disappear, if there’s dying, how to be grateful. Every funeral, every memorial service, is one where you give thanks for the beauty of that life or the quality of what.  And so, there’s a need, some of us feel, I know I do, to what is, looks like it must disappear to say, thanks, you’re beautiful. Thank you, mountains. Thank you, rivers.

“And we’re learning, how do you say goodbye to what is sacred and holy? And that goodbye has got to be in deep thanksgiving for having been here, for being part of it. I kind of sound like I’m crying, and I do cry, but I cry from gladness you know.  I’m so glad to recognize each other. You can look in each other’s face. See how beautiful we are.  It’s not too late to see that. We don’t want to die not knowing how beautiful this is.”

She translated Rilke, the German poet, who saw death as an integral part of the life cycle, as a transformative force that can lead to spiritual growth.  Rilke said, “But we must accept our reality and all its immensity. Everything, even the unheard of, must be possible within it.  This is, in the end, the only courage required of us. The courage to meet what is strangest and most awesome.”

The soul last known as Joanna Macy met life with an extraordinary courage, and encourages us to follow that path.  She has moved onward, to the furthest yet.  

Quiet friend who has come so far,

feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29 Rainer Marie Rilke, translated by Joanna Macy

_______________________________

Credit where credit is due: David Purpur opened the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Egyptian Book of the Dead so many decades ago, and expanded the boundaries of my thought. An interview with Joanna Macy from the podcast On Being can be heard here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/on-being-with-krista-tippett/id150892556?i=1000661063451

___________________________________

Garlic now hangs to cure, onions and potatoes have been harvested and turned into German Potato Salad, cucumbers into Bread & Butter or Caraway pickles, tomatoes into a delicious balsamic relish. Abundance reigns.

---