I am Half Agony, Half Hope

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in
F. W.
"I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never." - Jane Austen (Persuasion).

The agony is that of separation. All sufferings arise due to separation. To be separated from our loved ones is suffering. To be separated from conditions that make us happy is suffering. The nature of our existence is such that if we meet, we must part. If we don't, death will do us part. Separation manifests in two dimensions, time and space (distance). The time dimension manifests as impermanence and the space dimension manifests as discrimination between self and others.

The hope is that separateness is an illusion. That one day we will wake up to realize that we never part. That all the conditions for happiness are right here. Love must find a way. We are half agony, half hope.

What gives me the confidence that separateness is an illusion? Separateness is built on the conditions - time and space. Let's look at time. There was a time when a cloud was floating in the sky. Then it transformed into rain and became a river. Then the river with the help of the sun became water vapor and transformed into a cloud again. The other clouds think that the first cloud died. They think that a new cloud is now born. But transformation is continuity. The separation from the dimension of time is illusory. Death and birth, coming and going are illusory. The cloud manifests as a cloud when certain conditions are present, manifests as rain when a different set of conditions are present. If we truly love each other we will learn to recognize each other's manifestations. Then we will meet again, when you are a cloud, I will recognize you and smile at you and you can smile back.

Let's look at the dimension of space. Is it possible for a cloud to be separate from water? Cloud is water. Cloud and water are never separate from each other. We can see the water in the cloud and the cloud in the water. Everything is in everything else. The sunshine, rain, wind, earth are in the tree which bears the fruit that we eat. The sunshine, rain, wind, earth, the tree and fruit are in us. The transformation is illusory. The transformation is based on signs like touch, sound, image, taste and smell. If we cannot see, hear or feel someone we think they are not there but this cannot be true because nothing is ever destroyed. The cloud becomes rain, the water in your tea, the tear in your eye and then a cloud again and then rains again. You can listen to the sound of rain and smile. A cloud is never destroyed. A cloud never dies.

The transformation too is not real because all the while it has been only H2O - two atoms of Hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. We must learn to recognize transformation, to see through transformation.

"You are in me and I am in you. I am the hope in the agony and the agony in the hope. I have loved none but you." - F.W.

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