What is it that binds us all together, what is that that joins all living things?
It is breathing. Hau.
When I breathe, I am sharing the air that circles our planet and infuses everything. When I breathe, I am sharing the air that all livng things need to sustain their lives.
When I breathe, I am sharing the air that all men are breathing. Not only that, I am sharing the air that all those before me have breathed, have inhaled and exhaled, have taken in, absorbed, transmuted and then exhaled. I am breathing the past and all that has gone before me. I am thus physically connected to my ancestors, my tupuna, along with the descendants of all those around me, seen and unseen, known and unknown. I am also breathing the same air that those who follow will breathe. I am therefore physically and directly connected to the future. For this reason, because I breathe, I am part of everything, connected to the All, connected physically to every thing.
The trees around my house breathe the same air I do, only in a different way. The plants and flowers in my garden breathe the same air as I and the trees do, and draw their life from it. And there is no shortage of it. Abundance thus begins in breathing, in sharing the air of the past and present and future. Abundance begins in the recognition of the availability and abundance of the air around, in and of us. Abundance is the recognition that hau is there for all of us, a gift that asks no reward, that seeks no recompense, that has no attachment, emotional or otherwise. It simply IS.
If we have, do and will share the same air, then we might see that everything is connected and that in fact the concepts of past, present and future are illusions we put up to give ourselves a structure for our lives, a framework. We might accept that here is only Now, existentialist perhaps, but Truth for all of that.
If I breathe the same air that my tupuna (my ancestors) have breathed, then I am directly connected to them and to their memory. I am directly connected to all those who have journeyed before and who will journey after. I am physically connected to all those whom I can see, and to those I cannot. I am therefore of them and they of me.
The implications of accepting this are profound.
If I am so connected, then all men and indeed, all living creatures are interconnected and I cannot harm them, for to do so is to harm myself.
To harm myself is to harm them.
If I breathe the same air they do, then I am of them and they of me. To inflict harm on another is to harm myself. To wantonly destroy a forest is to inflict harm on myself and dis-respect the memory of those who have gone before and those who will follow.
For Hau interconnects all of us.
“Abundance is the recognition that hau is there for all of us, a gift that asks no reward, that seeks no recompense, that has no attachment, emotional or otherwise. It simply IS.”
It is what it is.
And that settles me when I feel out of control.
I know that I don’t need to fix it, do it, control it.
Being is enough.
By: mj on Sunday, November 2, 2008
at 18:01