Heroes Not Zombies

It’s so many years since I read The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying that I can’t remember how old I was at the time, but the concept of the “bardo” really struck me and stayed with me ever since.

The bardo is the gap (if I understand it correctly). It’s the gap between the in breath and the out breath. Do you ever notice that gap? Try it. Don’t try to change it, just try to notice it.

Then, here’s something harder, try to notice the gap between two thoughts.

Have you ever noticed how thinking is so incessant?? How our minds constantly run from worry to worry to memory to concern to plans to, just, well, thinking…….it’s like it never stops. But no single thought goes on for ever does it? So they all must have a beginning and an end, just like stories do. Is there any space in between? Are their any periods at the ends of your thoughts, or has all the punctuation disappeared?

This time, this time of Coronavirus, is, for many of us, a bardo.

I live in the Charente region of France. Since Tuesday midday daily life has tangibly changed. All the cafes, bars, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, have closed. All shops apart from “essential” shops, have closed. Nobody is allowed the leave the house without a signed form, an “attestation”, stating why you are going out – and it has to be one of the limited, allowed reasons.

It sounds like Sunday around here.

Sundays near my house have always had a deep quietness. You know how you can tell it’s snowed before you look outside? Because the snow damps down all the sounds? Well, it’s sort of like that, but different……it’s an absence of most of the sounds of human activity. It’s been sounding like that every day since Tuesday. I guess we’re in for a “month of Sundays”. It’ll be a blue moon next!

This bardo, this pause, this suspension of the routine is waking us up to a lot of things. Or, at least, it’s giving us the opportunity to waken up to them. It’s giving us the opportunity to reassess what is important to us. And one of those things is love and connection. Have you seen any of the videos of Italians or Spanish people out on their balconies in the cities? Clapping, singing, making a noise together? We need to be connected. We are intensely social creatures. OK, maybe a lot of that has to shift online just now, because we are confined to our houses, but it still strengthens the importance of our relationships.

It does something else too. It shows us that we really do live on the one, single planet. Remember the “blue marble” image?

There are no real borders.

There are no real boundaries.

We humans just make them up.

We are connected. We breathe the same air, drink the same water, eat food grown in the same soil.

Maybe it’s time to think again about how we do that.

Of course, I understand, that this is not a bardo for everyone. The health care workers in particular are facing and already dealing with exhausting, increasingly demanding challenges. But maybe that too can be a lesson learned. Maybe we should pay health care workers more than we pay footballers, bankers and “celebrities” for example? And there are plenty of other people working hard to keep us fed and safe too.

Maybe it’s time to change the system, away from grab and hoard to valuing, savouring, caring and sharing?

Hey, there’s plenty to think about……just –