How light do you travel?
Unload a little, lighten up. That phrase, lighten up has such great meaning.
1200 years ago, a middle aged man, P‘ang Yün loaded everything he owned into a boat, and sank it in a lake. Ever after, “he lived like a single leaf.”
“Being as Is
Food and clothes sustain
Body and life;
I advise you to learn
Being as is.
When it's time,
I move my hermitage and go,
And there's nothing
To be left behind.”
– P'ang Yün (龐蘊 Hõ Un)
To travel light, free, graceful travel, like a single leave. What elegance there is in this.
Practically, what does this mean?
To be unencumbered, uncluttered, without distraction. Focused, living with intention.
After sinking all of his possessions in the lake, P'ang Yün then devoted his life to family, Zen, poetry and wandering. Living like a single leaf.
We take such pleasure from things. So…why too, do we take such great pleasure in being free from those same things? Between these two places, life dances it's dance. In this space, we must live and flow.
Many Zen teachers and poets were wandering nomads. So many of them wrote such elegant, spare poetry, the poetry of emptiness.
This is how to live our lives, through the poetry of emptiness.
Every time I load my own bag for the onward journey (I have led a nomadic life for the past 7 years), I check myself. Every time, I find I am carrying more than I need. I understand how difficult it is to drop things. I have so few attachments in life, none to really speak of. But yet I still find a bag full of possessions. I don’t just possess these things, they possess me. They possess my time, my attention, my money, my thoughts. Even now, as I write about them, they are possessing me. Next week, I move on. I am already lightening my load. Everything I own is in one checked bag, and one carry-on day sack. But still, I could manage with far less. And I shall.
I shall never let up on this lightening of the load. Because with each mile, it weighs heavier.
The same is true of the load we carry in the mind, if we carry it. If we let it go, we are free, light. Like a single leaf, blowing wherever the breeze of life takes it.
Yesterday, I took a walk in Galicia, where my tumbleweed life takes me this week. I met an elderly sheep lady, caring for her flock. She was dressed roughly, string for a belt, burning brush wood to keep warm, making a gate and a fence from the same brush wood. Cooking a little meat and bread on her fire, she grinned and chatted away with us. She was radiantly happy. This field was her living room today.
As we walked a little further along the green lane, through the forest, we came across a couple of items of clothing, hanging in a tree, along with a large enamel pan and bowl. Another space in her home, perhaps the kitchen or bathroom? Further again, and we passed two rocks, stacked against a tree, with a clearly well worn seat pad, of a few twigs and a bundle of lichen. Yet further, a simple slope-roofed hut, made of planks, branches, and more lichen. A mail box at the field entrance, a gate (to keep the sheep in), made of a pile of brush wood. All very simple.
Just like layman Pang, this lady lives like a single leaf, light, moving with the breeze, going wherever her sheep need to go.
Lighten up.