When asked about “the world,” the Buddha, according to an early text, is said to have replied that that by which we perceive and conceive is “the world.” We dwell in the five senses and the mind, and our liberation must happen within this mind-led world – impermanent, unsatisfactory, without owner – not outside or beyond it.
Buddy arrived on the horizon of my world, suddenly and quietly, and, poor worldling that I am, I could not help running to him, folding him into my sixfold sense-world, merging, blending, becoming a confluence with him.
Knowing full well not to do so, I still mistook him for “mine,”grasping and clinging to him.
Some experts believe that human beings domesticated wolves by design. Wiser heads say that wolves came to human beings and coaxed them into alliance. Somewhere Kropotkin writes that there was society before there was “humanity.” We co-evolved with community, some of our wolf cousins modified their community to co-evolve with us. They joined us on a new path together.
Buddy seemed to share with me that place where we were together, long before either of us ever were: an ancestral connection renewed.
He would watch me closely in the house as dusk approached, looking to see if I were going to make a move for his gear and take him in the car. On the drive, I would hear his excited pants from the back seat, as we neared the park, our adored Battery Park.
He always expected the best of each new encounter there, whether with a human being or another animal. He was unguarded and, therefore, disarming. He was a pure, a single-minded, joy.
When people, with or without dogs, came near, he would go into a down position, staring intently at them, a pose which gained him many, many meetings, much attention, and the chance to make new friends. It was an irresistible and obvious ploy that brought people off the path they were on to come to meet him.
There would be a delight in these encounters that was both his and theirs. A child afraid of animals would run circles around him, squealing with pleasure; another child would stroke him continually, hugging and kissing him; a parent wishing to introduce a child to him, would smile with gratitude and affection at his gentleness.
Seeking a cool breeze or the tranquility of the river, escaping a crowded apartment or a lonely house, regardless of background, age, circumstance, views, identity; people would, for an instant, set aside their hope and regret and join with him. As we would walk, he would see strangers, who, unaware, were about to become his newest friends, my Buddy’s latest darlings, my darling’s momentary darlings.
He evoked this unguarded reaction, this surrender. One of the four “boundless minds,” kindness has a cool, moist quality, helping to bring things together and allowing them to bond. This is in contrast to an emotion such as aversion, characterized by a heat and dryness which separate.
Each meeting that he contrived taught me over again that he belonged to everyone and everything. We all belong to one another. The park was our boundless field of kindness, our field of play, of endeavor, of meeting. It will always be a holy field, a field of joy.
Impermanence is the element we carry so very personally within us and yet, also, share with all. It is the ground from which we spring and the medium in which we move. We practice what the poets call “the vanishing way of things.” Realization is to practice it in awareness. All things have the quality of becoming other. All that we gather is subject to dispersion; every meeting is subject to parting.
All that arises, passes away, and is not self.
In each new moment, every very next instant, we can take the opportunity to notice our true nature, to release our possessive, self-deceptive hold on things. Then, in a burst of mutual recognition, impermanence may acknowledge itself across self-imposed bounds. Overflowing them, out may spill the selfless stream, the elusive yet ever-present way of understanding and love.
