Three Masters
Best I can remember, I was about ten years old when my Dad came home with her. She was a mixed-breed, black, brown, and white beauty. I named her Snoopy. Yes, I actually taught her how to lay on top of her doghouse. She was an ‘outside’ dog and followed me everywhere. She was a well-known entity around the town. One day she and I were cruising a neighborhood street. A little boy whom I did not know came running out to greet her. His mom called out, “Don’t touch that dog, it might bite you.” Without missing a step he called back, “That’s ‘Noopy! ‘Noopy won’t bite me.”

Unfortunately Snoopy’s freedom ended when our town instituted a leash ordinance. Dad and I set up a wire run where we could attach her leash. She was miserable. And so was I, having to travel on my purple Schwinn® Stingray without her alongside. Consequently, after much thought, we loaded her up and drove to my Grandfather’s property about 125 miles north. The two of them became the best of friends. My Grandfather swore Snoopy could understand his every word, and that she, in her own language, conversed with him. She lived the last years of her life very happily. She remained an outside dog cruising the pastures and nearby homes until her peaceful death at a ripe old dog age.

While I’ve had many dogs in my life, Snoopy and two others have had the most impact. Freckles came along as part of our daughter’s fifteenth birthday. Freckles was a liver and white Springer Spaniel. We met her in Youngstown, Ohio when she was six weeks old. Love at first sight is an understatement. She was with us for over 13 years in three states. She was a wonderful family dog, but she and my wife Becky were inseparable, and ridiculously close friends. Like Snoopy, she was always glad to see you. Heck, you could leave the room, come back, and her sweet little tail would wag like you’d been gone for days. Her passing impacted us so that we haven’t ventured another dog since.

However, we’ve been blessed with a third sweet spirit. BB is our daughter’s pup. He is a 13 year old Yorkie Terrier, and blessedly, because our daughter is temporarily living with us, we get to share in the cuddly love this little 7 pound pup offers throughout each day. He just walked in to check on me as I type this.

“Reality cannot be controlled, but it can be lived fully, or it can be unsuccessfully avoided in fear. Animals are the masters of living and dying fully.” —Martin Prechtel

I begin an essay on compassion with these three dogs, three beautiful spirits, because of what is obvious to me; unconditional love — free compassion and present gentleness.

Gentle Disclaimer
Being gentle with self, quieting the thoughts (allowing them to float on by), and with tenderness touching one’s own spirit, is the way to gentleness with others. At the same time, gentleness with another is also beautiful support of gentleness with one’s own being.

“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.” —Agent K (Men in Black, 1997)

I lose my balance on the wire of thin tolerance for what I believe is stupid. This usually occurs  upon hearing opinionated words issuing from narrow thinking and identification with one group or another. Such is the reason that, for many years, I’ve focused my efforts on the individual. One group or another can only accomplish good and right things when made up of individuals who act on what is good and right for them to do.

I began writing this essay and then stalled. What stopped me was self-judgment, a self-assessment of my level of compassion. I didn’t see myself as a compassionate individual. Eventually I called BS. I am compassionate. Like anyone, I often let opinions and feelings get in the way of how my compassion shows itself. But when it comes down to it, when the rubber meets the road, I act on what I know is good and right for me to do — what is good and right from the core of my Trueness. What I’ve realized over time is that what I’ve failed to notice is the compassionate flow. Compassion comes from the inside and expresses itself externally in gentleness.

A Compassionate Sphere
I come to this essay months since the one previous. I really have no words, but here I continue regardless. I suppose I arrive here with frustration, and other feelings. About what? I really don’t know. Yes, specific things could I name, but in reality I know such things are products, creations, of a deeper something at play. So I must let go of the things and sit with the energy behind it all.

This energy doesn’t have a name, and I will not assign it one. Naming is a distraction and allows one to be pulled away by the feelings. Feelings are reactions to emotions that are brought about by the story in which one is trapped. I’m not sure if this is helping or not. Maybe it doesn’t have to. Maybe writing this is simply part of sitting with the energy. Yes, there are world events and issues, and conditions in our country that are concerning, but they are not any cause of my own uneasiness. I take complete and full responsibility for this dis-ease in my spirit. And I pray for ease.

Becky and I were coming home from a pandemic-get-out-of-the-house outing, driving home via the beautiful Natchez Trace that runs right by our neighborhood. I was looking straight ahead as I drove, seeing a paved Parkway curving through lovely land and beautiful trees declaring the season. It occurred to me all this was built, and made, on a sphere suspended in the space of a galaxy, itself spinning and moving within a great Universe. Followed by a thought of how stupid we as humans behave on this tiny round speck in a grand Universe — a magnificent, sprawling territory of infinite possibility; possibility squandered by our lack of ability to see miraculous beauty and endless opportunity.

Quiet Energy
Silence, I’m learning, is a spiritual energy critical to truly let go—releasing the grip I have on old ways of thinking and old thinking’s grip on me. The story now in control is one of grace. Yes, the story now in control is one of grace, not old storylines from either early childhood or false teaching along the way. In this story of grace is the strength of compassion, a gentle, loving-kindness shown to self and therefore to another. It is hard to give to another what you don’t hold for yourself. This is a basic principle behind all my work and writing of the last twenty years.

Stepping back, as it were,
one by one,
letting go of things,
bit by bit,
enjoying the silence.

But in the quiet, in the beginning,
of stepping away,
a constant hum noticed.
It’s insistence not ignored,
nor persistence pursued.

Now for some time, silence operates
just above the steady, vibrating hum;
like the low song of cicadas early
on a Mississippi morning.

And now realizing, thanks to
a collaborative heart of friendship,
the hum is recognized rhythm;
the heartbeat of who I am.

Further realized
in the rhythm
compassion, love
for oneself,
and all, as one.

I pray I will no longer hope (wait) for a reality other than the one that is. I pray I can learn peace in the moment, a peace that allows me to stand in the space of reality, with the energy present in and with each opportunity. I’m a stellar listener—to other people. But I must be a stellar listener to opportunity presented in any given moment. It is such opportunity, that when truly heard, informs what action I must take, what I must do, even if that is nothing. Then, to let that go, and move on. All this in love. That is my prayer.

“The basic ground of compassionate action is the importance of working with rather than struggling against.” —Pema Chodron

When one does what is good and right, gently informed by one’s Trueness, and places such action into the flow, this becomes a demonstration of trust. This is a challenging level of trust, a level that says you are okay with maybe never even knowing the outcome of your action.

If I Could See the Wind

The movement
of things invisible,
if my eyes could see,
present amazement
I might behold.

But truth, if known,
and visible the movement
of all things now seen,
the fears I carry,
heavier made
by the new things
that would be exposed.

And now seeing,
most likely
I’d step aside,
dodging the unknown
now made known,
missing the blessing
of these things
once blowing
right through me.

Notes:

Prechtel, Martin. The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2015. (P. 129)

Men in Black. Directed by Barry Sonnenfield, Columbia Pictures, 1997. Film.

Chodron, Pema. Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion. Boulder: Shambhala Publications, 2018. (P. 54, #48, Slogan: Change Your Attitude, But Remain Natural)