On going forward before the fear sets in

“Go beyond this way or that…without fear, go.” – Dhammapada

Last weekend we hit the trails on our mountain bikes. The trails we chose were on the site of a former tree farm. The ground was uneven, rooty, rocky. We like this trail because of its challenge. There are lots of tight twisty turns, steep hills, log and rock piles you need to traverse, and of course, “the crater”, which I’ll get to in a minute.

Mountain biking a technical trail is one of those things that the more you think about, the less likely you are to do, and the older you are, the less you are to do it, I think, for fear of getting hurt.

Children don’t generally have this problem. They go through their early part of life fearless, and for the most part, having more fun than the majority of adults.

Somewhere along the way, we learn to be afraid of things. While in some cases, that keeps us safe, more often than not, it actually holds us back.

This takes me to the crater, a feature of the trail that well, looks like somewhere a meteor hit- a bowl about the size of small house. If you are not expecting it, then you are just going along the trail when all of a sudden you find yourself at the precipice. It just appears. If you stop, you will spend a great deal of time looking at the drop. Wondering if people really do this. Picturing all of the ways it might go wrong.

When we came upon the crater on this last ride, there were the usual couple of riders peering over the edge. I know that I did that the first few times. I knew that this made it worse. So instead, I just pointed my bike straight, went over the edge, and came up the other side safe and sound.

We all have things in life that scare us to do and the more we think about them, the less we are likely to do them. When you reach that point, there is only one course of action to take:  without fear, go.

Here’s highlights from the trail by the way, taken from the internets:

On bees and bottles

“Desire is a hollow. And people say, ‘Look! He was free. But now he gives up his freedom.’” – the Dhammapada: Desire
Whilst enjoying lunch yesterday in an urban park with my wife and my good friend, a honey bee landed on my upturned bottle cap from my root beer. Our conversation kind of paused for a moment as we watched the bee drink a few drops of root beer that had collected on the surface of the bottle cap. It kind of looked like this:

*Note that this is not the actual bottle, but one I found on the internet. I was drinking root beer, but you get the point.
When the conversation resumed, some of my attention still remained on the bee. I watched as it flew into my nearly empty bottle, drank a bit, and then tried, unsuccessfully to exit the bottle.
Seeing the opportunity to help, I tipped the bottle so the bee could fly out, which it did, only to return to the bottom of the bottle minutes later. It made me think about people who go through cycles of consumption, remorse, abstention, and on back to consumption once the sting of whatever led to the remorse has faded. I think this cycle continues because the desire never goes away and what’s even worse, we’re not even aware that this is the case. Anyhow, I’m off to get some beer for the weekend…