October 2002

THE CRANES ARE FLYING

The cranes are flying from Canada over my farm. There is something nostalgic in the crying of these magnificent birds. It reminds me... it reminds me... I don't know exactly of what, of something deep within me, of the things unfinished, of the approaching winter, of the impermanency of life.

When these birds occasionally land on a big field nearby and if there is a thick fog around, I can walk in the midst of a big flock. Then I feel I am in another kingdom surrounded by 150 of these splendid birds. When the fog lifts they look at me with a great astonishment as if asking what kind of bird are you. I am sure I am a bird — so big and yet without wings. We watch each other with some sense of bewilderment. I am equally astonished. After a while I quietly retreat not to disturb them.

Yes, I am also astonished being among people. I sometimes ask myself what kind of bird am I amongst these beings. I should know them as I am one of them. But I hardly think I do. I watch them as if they were the cranes on a big field which is covered with a veil of fog.
The cranes are flying over my farm. I envy them — their skill, their wonderful dignity, their uprightness. Are those the flying Buddhas? Are they reminding me that life is about flying, about dignity, about uprightness, about not being attached to any land? Strange, the sparrows and the crows never appear to me as images of the Buddha. Yet they are Buddhas too. You, little hopping sparrows, without knowing it, you are on the way to the Buddahood as well.

How may reincarnations will it take you to arrive there? It doesn't matter. Evolution has its own mysterious ways. Lord Buddha and Buddhism have their own mysterious ways. What a magnificent conception of life to claim that every living being is a Buddha.

How wonderful and strange life is. I wonder whether we could be more free and more at peace with ourselves if we could fly like cranes — at least in our imagination. Or perhaps real freedom is to be born in the human form because only then you can understand what freedom is, and what it is not — even if you cannot fully attain it. Who wants to attain total freedom? Would it not be some kind of terror — to be totally free? Is it not just right to be partly free and realise our destiny amidst constraints.

Life without constraints — what is it? Can you image works of art created in the universe of total freedom, which has no constraints? No constraints, no art. No constraints, no life; that is as we have known it.

The cranes are flying over my farm. This time they bring the memory of the Russian film under the same title: "The Cranes are Flying". It was a film about the last world war, about the enduring power of love, about the needlessness of dying young, about the suffering of those who survived and waited in vain for those who never returned. Those cruel years of World War II were needless. At least the cruelty, the barbarity and the crimes were needless.

Yet in those years one knew what was important, one knew the difference between good and evil. Fundamental values and fundamental concerns of life were sorted out from the trivial ones. Nowadays it is no longer so. I mean in so-called developed countries where basic preoccupations are centred on securing for oneself a comfortable life.

How comfortable are we? Why are we so often anxious and insecure? Why are we always rushing and restless? How can you be comfortable if you do not have the inner peace? These Western eyes are not smiling. They are not radiant. These Western eyes tell us the whole story. What is the meaning of this comfort? Is it not some kind of trap? Are we not intelligent enough to see it through? The cranes are flying. They are trying to teach us dignity, uprightness, simplicity. Can we learn?

The cranes are flying over my farm. I watch them fly away. Then I go to the forest to see oak trees turning purple, red and brown. In the dialogue Phedrus, by Plato, Socrates says: "In the olden days, my boy, people were content to listen to oak trees and learn from them." I try to listen to the oak trees. I embrace one. I feel the elemental power within me.

But its language — I do not understand. I try to become a tree, imagine myself to have been a tree. At this instance the bond of empathy grows. We understand each other. We breath the same rhythm of life. My cells are pulsating with a similar harmony. It feels good, renewing, especially when I am away from ordinary hustles. Yes, it feels good, elemental and renewing as long as I do not return to my human form and do not try to think about it and verbalise it. Then I lose the bond of unity with my brother oak. Is this what Socrates meant by listening to an oak tree — descending to their level while somehow suspending the human form? Maybe... Yet I feel there was something else there. Something deeper — a sense of dialogue that eludes us nowadays.

We have developed our splendid cerebrating faculties. Yet we have lost our more elemental faculties. Now when Socrates says "In olden days my boy, people were listening to oak trees..." it probably means that even at this time, in Socrates' time, they were no longer capable of such a form of listening. In the Homeric culture it was much simpler. We see this simplicity in pre-classical sculptures, of shepherds especially. Their smiles are so endearing and so naive and simple. It is this naivite which is a part of charm and beauty of these early sculptures. This naive smile disappears from the Greek sculptures of the classical period. With the disappearance of this smile, the Greeks lost the capacity to listen to oak trees.

Are we repeating the same process on yet another level? Whereby by acquiring material comfort we are losing the sense of beauty, the sense of depth, the sense of wholeness and holiness of life. Mysterious are the ways of evolution. Equally mysterious are the follies of man.

The cranes are flying over my farm, again reminding me of ancient mysteries of the time that we knew much more — but differently; of the time when we could feel in depth but not verabilse. The cranes are flying. They are a reminder of something beautiful which we celebrate with a pang of the nostalgic heart.

PROF. HENRYK SKOLIMOWSKI