Singing Impermanence

I've been doing most of my blogging over at Professor Hauck these days. You might want to mosey on over there for a look at some of the other sides of my blogospheroself. In the meantime, here's another reflection from the Cave:

Even before Margaret and Linc and I stepped out of the Providence Zen Center on Tuesday night, we could hear the frogs in the pond calling loudly to one another, singing for love. I felt so happy, knowing they had awakened from their long sleep in the cold mud and were ready to do it all over again, the feeding and singing and breeding. Pretty soon tadpoles will be swimming voraciously through the shallows. Many will be eaten by larger creatures, koi and egret, but many will survive, tails dissolving, arms and legs sprouting. And then they’ll hop up on the shore and add their voices to the cacophony. This is the way of the world.

Frogs hold a special place in my heart because of their transformation, not simply from baby to adult, but from fish-like swimmer to reptilian hopper. They are visible and audible manifestation of the impermanence of all things.

You know perhaps that frog populations are in decline world-wide. Scientists speculate that they are ultrasensitive to environmental changes such as increased toxins and shifts in air temperature and water quality. A day may come very soon when the frogs sing no more in the spring. This is very sad, and yet completely inevitable. Their extinction—and one day ours—is as much a part of the vast cycles of birth and death as the changing of the seasons. We all know these things, but as we go about our day-to-day business we tend to push them to the far frontiers of our consciousness. It is hard enough to contemplate the death of those we love or of our (gulp) own dear selves, but almost unbearable to think about the extinction of life on our planet.

As it happens, a friend's death had brought us and many others to the Zen Center that night. We all felt very sad, because JW suffered so much before he died and because we will miss him and because one day each of us will also pass. So the loud lewd singing of the frogs lightened my heart because I could remember that all this suffering and death is part of a larger cycle, one that is perhaps too large for us to grasp.

When we got back to Linc’s apartment, Margaret gave me a gift she had purchased earlier that day thinking to give it as an anniversary present in August. But suddenly decided it was supremely appropriate for that time and place.

Will it surprise you know that she gave me a sterling silver frog pin?

As long as I own that pin it will remind me of more things than I can say, of Margaret’s great love, of JW, the singing frogs, the blue tiled roof of the Diamond Monastery high above the pond, our dear teacher, the waning moon, our grief and our laughter, the long ride home.