Erase Yourself!

Ever since we started meditating, my mind keeps going back to this one line from Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli. I know that the reading level is... you know... not college level. But, as I've probabaly said before, I believe that every book, regardless of its "literary merit" or "reading level," has something to teach us, contains something that we can apply to our own lives. SO, I'm going back to 6th grade book club and describing a scene to you.

http://www.youthwired.sat.lib.tx.us/BookLinks2.0/BLimages/cover--stargirl.jpg

Leo, the main character, goes into the desert with a girl who calls herself Stargirl and her pet rat, who says they are headed for an enchanted place. Stargirl says that the enchantment starts when you "do nothing" (Spinelli, 90), which she says is hard because "even just sitting... our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering," which is bad if you "want to know what's going on outside [yourself]" (Spinelli, 91). Leo asks her how become nothing, and she says that it's different for everyone, but that she "[tries] to erase herself...[imagining] a big pink soft soap eraser... going back and forth" (Spinelli,91). Both Leo and Stargirl attempt to erase themselves. Though Leo doesnt succeed, he does admit to being "aware of stepping over a line...[into] a territory of peace... and... while [he] never did totally lose awareness of [himself], [he] did... lose Cinnamon," who he was holding, in the sense that "[he] no longer felt his pulse, his presence, in [his] hands. It seemed [that they]... were one" (Spinelli, 94).

Cinnamon the rat.

http://www.becomingdomestic.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/rat2.jpg

Long quote/ description, so I apologize for that. But I really felt like that passage bore an eerie resemblance to
1) what we do at the beginning of class every day, and
2) a few of the things that Siddartha says.

The first time I noticed the resemblance was when Siddhartha was with the Samanas studying and he "was a heron... was a dead jackal... [and] deadened his senses and dulled his memory" (Hesse, 17). The first part of the quote reminded me vaguely of how Leo and Cinnamon became one during his meditation. But the second part of the quote paralleled very closely what Stargirl says about erasing herself, because she admits that "the hard part is erasing [her] senses... and the hardest is erasing [her] thoughts (Spinelli, 91).

The heron Siddhartha became one with.

http://jaqoup.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/ubuntu_heron.jpg

So, I read on. And the parallels continued. Siddartha talks about how he "abandoned his being" and "lingered in the Not-Self hours and days" (Hesse, 18). Similar to being nothing, as Stargirl advised? I think so. And again, when Siddartha talks about how there was a river outside and a river within him and in both "the divine principle lay hidden" (Hesse, 40), I was reminded of Leo becoming one with Cinnamon through meditation, recognizing his ties to nature.

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/cpl/projects/graphcuttextures/data/interaction/LittleRiver.jpg

OK. So I've established that this whole "unity" motif is existent in both Stargirl and Siddartha. But do I actually buy into this? Have I ever actually experienced this, in our many meditative practices?

I don't think I've ever actually come to that level, where I truly become one with nature, where the heartbeat of the Earth and my heartbeat are one, like those of Cinnamon and Leo. But actually, today at the garden, barefoot and slightly freezing, I did have this moment where I felt very... I don't know. Not alone, not at all, but I did feel supremely aware of myself. And through this awareness of myself, I also felt little bits of myself sort of stretching out to touch the world around me, and I saw the similarities between my life spirit, the essence of me, and that of the trees, and the ants, and that one dragonfly that flew lazily by my ear.

http://wordsprout.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/8_dragonfly_summer.jpg

I had forgotten about the Stargirl's erasing advice though. I'll have to try that on Tuesday! :)

http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/files/2008/04/eraser.jpg