the little death

In less than 22 hours, I'll be leaving the Temple, on my way to teach retreats in Finland and Austria, with some stop-overs in Germany and Switzerland.  While I'm gone, the Temple will continue to function as usual, held lovingly by the sangha and its leaders.

Preparing for a trip always means, for me, letting go of the endless to-do list.  There is never enough time to do everything I feel "should" be done before I go, and so the last day ends up being an avalanche of decisions -- this is important, this is not important.  By the time I am on my way to the airport, everything has moved into the "not important" column.

And what a relief this is.  It feels a little bit like preparing for death -- the slow, expected kind of death, not a sudden violence and final end.  There is no preparation for that quick good-bye, except to live a life where every moment is important, and there is nothing to do but be.

To travel is to enter the land of hurry up and wait.  Who knows what will happen?  The itenerary on my plane ticket is simply a map, and as we all know, the map is not the territory.  And so my plans include a little death, not the final one -- a death of what I think I should do.  Off I go to the land of being.  Au revoir!