Tracy Cochran

“The trees are coming into leaf /Like something almost being said,” writes the poet Philip Larkin.

It is spring here in the Northeastern United States, and many other places as well. This change of season happens every year, yet every time it stirs up all kinds of attitudes and feelings. On a pretty day, walking outside can feel like walking into a big green, murmuring party. This can bring a twist of longing. We want to be part of the conversation but we can’t quite hear what is being said. We are delighted that winter has passed at last, and  that new life is bursting forth. This feels miraculous, every year. But we can also feel a little wistful, a little left out. Larkin’s poem continues: “The recent buds relax and spread,/Their greenness is a kind of grief.”

Why grief? Spring brings a surge of hope and energy. But it is also a pretty flashy demonstration of impermanence. Life is beginning again, no matter what happened in your life last year. If you have experienced a big loss, this can be wrenching. Even if you, like me, just had a tough year, containing an array of challenges, we can meet spring feeling a little tentative about all this wild blooming. We want life to hold back just a little.

“April is the cruelest month,” writes the poet T.S. Eliot. “Breeding lilacs out of the dead land.”

On rainy days, we may feel sad and disappointed, wondering if maybe spring just isn’t what it used to be. 

And yet, deep down, under these different mind states, there is an impulse to flow and change ourselves. 

“To study the self is to forget the self,” taught the 13th Century Zen sage Dogen. To forget the self is to let go of our fixation on certain opinions and beliefs about ourselves. It means seeing everything that arises, feeling everything, not banishing what we deem to be bad or clinging to what we deem to be good. Forgetting the self means opening to our experience with honesty and with kindness–turning towards our experience as a loving witness instead of identifying with it. As we practice this, moment by moment, we discover that our so-called negative emotions and mind states are actually our life force, our creative force, our real wisdom and compassion.

This spring, let us let ourselves begin afresh. Let us entertain the idea that under all our desire and longings, there is a wish to belong to life–to be part of the great green flourishing. This wish is as close to us as our beating heart.

Why don’t I go ahead and invoke another great spring poem? “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower,” writes Dylan Thomas. “Drives my green age.”

We share the life force with all beings that live. We wish to be part of life, to come out of separation and join in. And we wish to be aware. This is our practice, being with life in its unfolding. 

As we do this, one moment at time, something slowly miraculous begins to happen. We stop clinging to the life force that flows through us as if it is strictly ours, as if we must affirm and protect it at all costs. Something deep inside begins to soften and open and unfurl like a seed becoming a shoot. We begin afresh. We bloom.