Take It and Go

In our 7am Peace Chapel Meditation group this morning, we read and shared from the anonymously aggregated sayings of the Desert Fathers. It brought to inspiration one of the most beautiful and freeing realizations for me. The thoughts on attachment, how we attach to things, people and ideas, and what liberation from these mistaken positions could look like. From the passage:

Two elders were staying with each other and never quarreled. Said the one to the other, “Let us quarrel the way people do.” In answer the other one said to him, “I don’t know how a quarrel begins,” but he said “Look, I am putting a brick between us and saying it is mine; you are to say, “No, it is mine,” and that is how it begins.” They did so and one of them said “That is mine.” And the other one said, “No, it is mine.” And the first one said in reply, “Yes, indeed; take it and go.” And off they went, finding nothing to quarrel with each other about.

Isn’t it so darn intersting that this brick, is everything we hold and silently call ours. House, the property, money, relationships, friends, pets, the dog who lies at your feet while you read, the years that have already happened, the years that have not yet happened, the car you drive. We even have a brick for ‘my life’.

Every quarrel I have had, every grief I have felt, even the fear that wakes me up at four in the morning begins exactly where the elder said it begins— the moment a claim of this is mine is made. The moment that small, almost unnoticeable word “me/mine” lodges itself somewhere behind our breastbone, the brick stops being a brick and becomes a fortress that we put a flag on.

It’s also so freaking intersting to see that the moment we do that, somehow, like clockwork, sometimes sneakily, life comes and rearranges things. Have you not noticed? For me, sometimes it’s that incredible friendship, or that job or a title I hold dear. For some it may be that their friend moves, a diagnosis that changes the prior status of things, or a pet that suddenly starts to limp in old age. We, in introspect, then discover that we were never as solid as we thought, things that visit us as provision etc were never as stable as we concluded. We may then begin to see that our experience of things, relationships, positions etc are more of visitations than a thing we could ever lay a hold of.

I am keenly aware that nothing is mine. Nothing could ever be mine. Nothing taken was mine to hold onto, nothing I have achieved was mine to acheive. Everything can and will be taken…not by me. Just taken, the way light is taken back into evening. And the crazy thing is that this is not something philosophical. It’s so literal when we can allow oursevles to relax into our bodies, release the tension that grips subconsciously at the need to control anything. That in essence is what surrender is and then we experience clearly this understanding of nothing ever being truly owned.

Meister Eckhart had a word for this. Gelassenheit. Letting-be. Allowing what is, to be what it is, without the small hand of the self stepping in to claim or to refuse. He went so far as to say that the truly poor person is the one who knows nothing, has nothing, wants nothing as the deepest kind of freedom. The freedom of someone who has finally stopped pretending the brick was theirs.

The Tao Te Ching points the same direction, sideways. The sage acts without acting, and so nothing is left undone. Water does not own the riverbed. It moves through, shaping and being shaped, never claiming, never refusing. And somehow the valley gets fed. In the 12th verse it says,

Colors blind the eye, Sounds deafen the ear.Flavors numb the taste. Thoughts weaken the mind.Desires wither the heart.The Master observes the worldbut trusts his inner vision. He allows things to come and go.His heart is open as the sky.

The Desert Fathers were sons of the same insight, sitting in their cells, calling no thing their own, and finding that what was left over(once all the bricks had been handed back) was a peace that bewildered the empire that had birthed them.

I want to be careful here, because teachings like these often get heard as a kind of cold detachment. Someone may then say, Well, does that mean you are careless with things? Well, why not just give me everything you have?

The opposite, in my experience. The grip is not the love. Often the grip is the very thing that holds love at arm’s length, busy defending a perimeter that was never really there to defend. To live without the claim is to live with the hands open. To love a partner without owning them. To run a business without owning the outcome. To pray without owning the answer. To live, even, without owning the life — receiving each day the way one receives a guest, knowing the guest will go.

The brick that the elder handed over with such ease was no less real for being given away. If anything, it was more itself. Merely given.

And the quarrel? No real quarrel could ever find a true foothold.

So this is the contemplation for today.

Is there a brick somewhere you have been defending or holding tightly. A role. A possession. A version of yourself. A future you have been writing in your head. Notice the grip. Notice where in the body the claim lives. And then, very gently, do what the elder did. Hold it the way you would hold something that was loaned to you for a little while. Cool to the touch, particular, present, yours to enjoy. Yours, perhaps, to hand back when the time comes.

Yes, indeed. Take it and go.

And see what is left when nothing has been taken from you, because nothing was ever yours to begin with.

Prompts to sit with this week

* What is a brick you are quietly defending right now? Is it a role, an outcome, a person, a self-image? Where in your body do you feel the grip of mine?

* Recall something you once held tightly and have since lost or released. What does it feel like in retrospect? Was it the thing itself that was painful, or the claim you had made on it?

* Sit with this for five minutes: Everything I have today was given. Everything will, in time, be taken. Watch what arises. Is it resistance, grief or a strange relief. Don’t try to fix it or do anything about it! Just notice it.

* Pick one thing today: your morning, your coffee, your conversation, your body and receive it as a guest who has come to visit instead of something you own. What changes when you hold it that way?

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