WHAT IS TIME?

My fair haired lad

adapted from an anonymous Gaelic song of the eighteenth century

Oh my fair haired lad
You have made me sad...

young I was when loving you
with hair flowing, you
from my kindred taken
they gave me home, I have forsaken

curled hair ringleted
bonny as any contemplated
my love secure in depth
of closeted chamber in my flesh

head like golden streams of hair
all my choice was there
if only you had chosen to refrain
coming to the tavern to sup there

winter was early when I fell first
in love as I must tell it
my own dearest wish you were
but you ceased from following your girl

last year I had a footstep
it sounds heavy now not laughter as I had
music sad I hear the tune yet
and I am full of it deep sorrowing for the lad

oh my fair haired lad
you have made me sad
my trouble lies in me here
and sadness around me all my cares
lad of the lovely hair
sorrow is now my share

I woke this morning in a negative frame of mind,after yesterday thinking I had come to some understanding.

Thought is conditioned. As we watch the breath rising in our bodies another breath comes to matcH it. In,out ...the conditioned cycle of response. One inhalation leads to the next.

So too thoUght.if I think something do these thoughts rise because of conditioning? Yes my thoughts of how wonderful past days might have been have arisen because maybe the winter isn't there just now. My thoughts of summer gone are dependent on winter coming.

I bring up mindsets. I am,say, angry or depressed because have known these things before and they have left residue in my mind . Therefore it is easy to recreate them. Perhaps the residues of joy and positivity are less well implanted and so do not rise so readily. Yet discipline is all. We do not have to go with the anger,the depression. We breathe into it to learn of its true nature. If I think sad,I am sad though there may not be sadness around me.

These things have I become and these things I undo. They do not define me. For myself does not exist except as a conventional tag to fit into everyday reality more easily. Yesterday I understood these things and everything was peaceful

So when I wake and the thrum of a dark cloud is there with its repetitive drone, have I undone that which I have started ? No. it is rather that I become aware of just how busy my mind is...yet in this blessing ...for in knowing what's there we move back to the point of concentration and try again until balance reasserts.

It is not the contempaltion of karma that is my tyranny. It is my mind. Bless us all as we learn to tame this inner tiger.