Creation and Destruction, and Everything In-Between

Safeway parking lot, Balboa Avenue, San Francisco, February 1975 — 

“You must face annihilation over and over again to discover what is indistructable in yourself.”
— Pema Chodron

This quote started me thinking (years later in 2018), because actually, creation, persistence (survival), and destruction are in a way all parts of the same thing.

It is the cycle of all things in the physical universe. Like you are born, you live for a time, and then you pass away. As does your car, a banana, a city, a mountain, or the Earth.

This universal cycle of action was first described in the Upanishads, and we still refer to the three ‘gods’ Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver), and Shiva (the destroyer).

And it is good when you have all three in your skillset, because when you can at will create something, mutate and change it and preserve it, and then destroy it, then in fact you are in control of that thing, and this means that it is not in control of you, because you can be at will the causative agent.

You’re In Control!

In other words, when you can start it, change it, and stop it, then you can control it (in the best sense of the word), and it is yours.

I used this to learn how to ride a motorcycle. I figured that first I’d learn to stop it. That seemed like a good thing to know before anything else, and it was easy.

In the vacant Safeway parking lot, I’d roll it forward, then stop it. When that felt easy, I set to learning to start it. So I’d let the clutch out and let it move forward. (And then I could stop it because I’d already learned that part.)

And once I knew I could start it and stop it, all that remained was to learn how to change or modify it. And to learn that, then in between starting and stopping it, I learned to change its direction, then it’s speed.

And then I rode home on my motorcycle.

Oh Dear! It’s Good! It’s Bad!

The words creation and destruction have a very different feel to them. Creation good. Destruction bad. But … not really. Think of it as start – change – stop … and make it yours.