“Who I am is who I could not not be.” ~ Peter Senge
A month ago, on our way to Santa Fe, New Mexico, while driving through beautiful Flagstaff, Arizona, I stumbled upon a used bookstore, Starrlight Books. This happened only because my internal GPS—“Gastronomy Paging System”—that doesn’t need external maps, directed me to a spot called Alpine Pizza where I had the best pizza outside of New York City.
I picked up a used copy of Rainer Maria Rilke’s collected poetry at this quaint bookstore.
And we stumbled upon this wall across the bookstore, near where we had parked. How we miss things the first time around because we are too hungry to see!
Buddha in Glory
Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet–
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.
Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,
a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.
Sometimes I reflect on how did I ever manage to write so much here? Not just that, but get to that space where I was just writing stories day and night which resulted in an edited collection that is now being shared by word of mouth!
And the truth is: I wasn’t thinking about the end, I was just doing what I had to do and what I had to do was write. I was resolving some technical issues with Vusi, the designer and gate keeper of this site, and I told him what I loved the most about what he had created for me was that whenever I was able to browse my old writings or others’ quotes that I had saved, it so profoundly connected me to my purest essence as a being that I was moved to write again. While saying such dramatic things to him—dramatic because that’s what comes out when I haven’t been able to actually put thoughts on paper or type them somewhere—I stumbled upon these words by Peter Senge which I had saved back in 2009 when I didn’t even know how to upload a photo on here! I can’t even recall how I stumbled upon that website.
You cannot get attached to a pure intention because you can’t be attached to who you are. You can only become attached to an ideal of who you are, such as a way I think I should look. It is pretty easy to get attached to that. But who I am is who I could not not be. How do you become attached to something that you could not not be? If your deeper intention is an inseparable part of who you are, it is not capable of attachment.I don’t think you can seek to accomplish your intention. You live out of your intention; it is like the wind, the life force from which your energy and determination arises, whereas your vision is a particular destination you really want to reach.
