The Frog and the Scorpion

An Aesops Fable:

A scorpion and a frog met beside the bank of a river and the scorpion asked the frog "Please Mr. Frog will you carry me upon your back across the river, for I have no other way to cross."  The frog, wary of the danger replies, "How do I know you won't sting me, after all, you are a scorpion." The scorpion stated rather matter of factly, "Of course I will not sting you, because if I do, I surely will die too.  After all, I cannot swim." 

The frog, satisfied by the apparent logic of the scorpions response sets out across the river, scorpion on his back.  Suddenly, midstream, the frog feels a sharp sting.  Slowly, the venom coursing through his body, the frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink.  Knowing the scorpion has doomed them both to drown the frog only has the strength to gasp "Why?"

Facing certain death the scorpion can only reply "Because I am a scorpion, and it's in my nature to sting..." 

The moral of this story has been interpreted many different ways.  There is no malice, no anger, no real intention to harm, behind the scorpions actions.  Only an indiscreet error leading to inevitable destruction.  A virtue, not of the sharpness of the sting, but of the potency of its venom.  

We all have a capacity to be the scorpion or the frog.  To accept a risk of being hurt, and a risk of hurting others.  Such is the complexity of all relationships.  I've found that, though Buddhism provides the tools to know equanimity and loving kindness, regardless of practice, it is the nature of life that sometimes we become the frog, and sometimes we become the scorpion.  Though we may strive to perfect ourselves, we are as yet unperfected.  

Expansion and Contraction

I have a new yoga teacher who I'm really starting to like. She does a more traditional Hatha practice and at the beginning of each practice she draws an observation from the yoga sutra's and attempts to connect it to daily life. Today she discussed expansion and contraction, in the context of breath, our muscles, and even our economy.

As I sat in my beginning meditation I allowed my mind to open to expansion and contraction. The universe itself was birthed into being as it rapidly expanded from a singularity, slowly expanding still, perhaps only to contract again in some far distant future. Pondering the steady expansion of our universe I was reminded of the Hermetic saying "as above so below, as below so above." A concept seemingly linking all things however small to that which exists on a grander cosmological, even spiritual scale. But what is "below" that is "above"? What thing, what characteristic, is so transcendent? Perhaps it's as simple as expansion and contraction.

As above so below.  Expansion and contraction is the quality that defines life itself. We breath in, we breath out. To breath in and to breath out is to be alive. To contract and to expand, it is a beating heart, it is the engagement of our muscles to allow our movement in the world. To project and open to receive. to copulate and create new life. To extrovert, or introvert. To open to others, or draw into ourselves. Expansion and contraction, breathing in and breathing out, taking things in and letting things go. These are the yin and the yang, the fire and water, and the sun and the moon. The poetic dichotomy of elements themselves bound in yoga, bound in union. These are the masculine and feminine aspects, projecting outward, and opening to receive. Expansion and contraction, a duality, represented on many different levels, symbolic, physical, sexual, and cosmological. Yoga is union, and to manifest union yoga is the cultivation, the balancing, of expansion and contraction. We see this duality in Pranayama, in the form of the physical practice, and in the form of harnessing the masculine and feminine energies of Kundalini. Yoga is union, both within the physical self and within the divine. The divinity within us with the source, with the primordial energy of the universe. Our existence itself, on every level, an expansion or contraction, and yoga, a tool to bring balance to their union.

A Noble Truth

It is in our nature to suffer.
We suffer because we cling to things that are transient, and all things in life are transient.
Our suffering can be overcome.
A path exists, available to each of us, that will lead to an end to our suffering.

These are a paraphrase, an interpretation, of the four noble truths. The Buddha's first gift to the world. They are simple ideas, and yet worthy of a lifetime of contemplation. We suffer because of attachment, craving, and clinging. It comes in many forms, our relationships, our materialism, even our approach to spirituality. We are socialized to identify self via object, to define our individual nature by what we do, what we wear, and with whom we consort. We are social animals in a social world, desperate for acceptance and the approval of others. We build a fortress around our ego, ever vigilant of those that might challenge our sense of self. We construct elaborate measures to quantify our worth, beginning with a score on a test that ranks us as less than or more than, onwards to wealth, career, and title. Our culture, particularly in the West encourages us to feed ego, to define our individual nature, to separate ourselves from fellow man. In feeding ego we feed alienation. We feed insecurity, desire, doubt. Who are we, but what we appear as to others? Where is the self, when all our mental jewelry, the adornments supporting our ego, are stripped away?

I've been contemplating a quote by Telliard de Chardin "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings sharing a human experience."

We are spiritual beings sharing a human experience... If we but accept this simple premise, how can we possibly see our existence as rooted in the pursuit of supporting ego? This life, this canvas, is but a stage for our development. A fine tool for the refinement of our truest nature. We are each threads woven together into the tapestry of our shared reality. Our experiences, our choices, our karma, tied together in every loop and stitch, and reverberating out across the fabric of our collective being. We are entangled, energetic, and eternal, and ultimately we are one.

If we are spiritual beings sharing a human experience why then do we suffer? Perhaps we suffer because we have forgotten our nature. Perhaps we suffer to find our path and awaken to our truest self. Perhaps our suffering is instead our gift, a sharp blade, which used properly, can cleave us of our ignorance, and awaken us to our potential. A means to remind us of a first noble truth, lost in our modernity, the truth that we are all simply spiritual beings sharing a human experience.