Reverence to the One Tusked Lord, grant us Wisdom.
It can be surprising how many perspectives one single moment can have and what we can learn from it, particularly in conjunction with other events in our concurrent interactions with the material world, if we just take a moment to look around. This is one such moment in the dance.
It's 5:30 at an urban hub commuter rail station, the waiting area packed as a mass of people shift from foot to foot, waiting for the (late) call to the platform for their train. A few people who frequent that specific time pace the gates, peering at distant train windows to try and recognize conductors and anticipate the platform, occasionally stopping to talk or signal to each other.
The call is made and the crowd moves as one in a stampede to platform 8. The gate doors are wide but still too narrow for the tide, those in back jostle and break against the bottleneck, pushing those in front to keep moving even if there's no where to go.
One small woman, her attention focused on the conversation on her cell, angles in from the side at speed, cutting around dozens of people and wedging her way into the edge of the gate seemingly without a thought, trailing a large handbag behind her. Once wedged into the threshold she pulls through, ignoring the crush around her and yanking her bag roughly through the tangle of legs and the frame of the gate without looking.
She jolts to a halt as the bag doesn't come and a murmur of protest rises around her, and casts a doe-eyed apology over her shoulder then turns and yanks again, causing a squawk of alarm from the woman behind her, who tilts and grasps the door frame.
In a heartbeat the first woman goes from innocence to fury and shouts an accusation at the second, but she's quickly forced to face forward and keep moving by the pressure of traffic.
In the crush of the crowd, the second woman had been trying to find her own way forward, impatiently waiting for her own chance to make it through the gate. As she's about to pass through she finds herself shoved aside by a small frame wedging herself through the door, talking into her cellphone and seemingly oblivious to the people around her. She bristles at the younger woman as the bag catches her behind the knee, nearly knocking her down. And then the girl yanks again and only the frame of the gate keeps her from going down in the crowd as her leg is pulled forward. Of course, that leg had to go somewhere....
There is a brief, loud exchange of accusations and glares, then both are separated for a few minutes as their place in the rush passes through the gates and down onto the platform.
As the crowd starts to thin further down the platform, woman 1 sees woman 2 across the platform and starts up a hue and cry of invective and allegation, claiming woman 2 kicked her and making general judgements on her character. The second takes a full step back, her expression shocked, and replies that the woman cut her off and tripped her not once but twice, and when that doesn't stop the tirade shouts at the first to stop lying. Woman 1 only backs tearfully down and gets into the car she had been in line for when a group of other passengers comes to woman 2's defense, backing her up. Woman 2 ducks away too, walking swiftly down the platform head and shoulders bent.
As I walk down the platform I wonder at the first Woman's reaction and if she really had no awareness of the link between her yanking the bag and the result. She had been apologetic for just an instant at first, after all. Why assume a perfect stranger in such a crowd would simply kick her?
I took a seat and noticed the second woman sitting curled against a window, visibly upset. The car is a 'quiet car' and so usually fills up first. But there are plenty of open seats here, which means there likely are plenty more in the other 7 cars too. I wonder what all the rush was about and if it was worth it.
I open the book I am reading, an examination of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras and several traditional commentaries, and my eyes fall immediately on this line:
"Ignorance is mysterious, since the question of how it comes to arise in the first place is bypassed... ...by saying it is beginningless."
'I' is not this for any of us, not this bundle
of neurons, biochemical impulses and reactions. In this birth, I've
understood this general idea for a very long time, yet in the process of turning away from the spiritual and focusing on building a career and supporting my family I still slid into a kind of waking
forgetfulness, a kind of knowing while not knowing - a
strange thing when I think about it. It happens smoothly, invisibly, a part of the process of living in this world, unless you hold tight to what you know and practice it. A couple of years ago I might have been either of those women.
Perhaps Ignorance itself is similar, perhaps it's not so mysterious. One might even say it is inherent to the condition itself, the necessary price to participate fully.
Sri Shiva's 5 'Acts', one of which is Concealment, are also called 'Graces', after all.
~oOo~ Om, Namah Shivaya ~oOo~
