That Overwhelming Feeling
In the midst of this crazy year, I had not paid a lot of attention to the space tourism phenomenon. Three billionaires, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson all launched trips to space for the rich or famous as part of their privately funded companies that build and launch suborbital and orbital space capsules. When I first heard about it, I was concerned about the safety of anyone other than NASA sending people into space, as well as skeptical about the motives of three billionaire men with outsized egos. There was even a kind of race between Branson and Bezos to launch first in July. I don’t remember who “won”, but it was a relief that they both landed safely.
Jeff Bezo’s Blue Origin launched their second trip on October 13. These trips are only 10 minutes long and travel about 62 miles above earth to just touch the edge of outer space where the crew experiences weightlessness for a few minutes, then they descend with parachutes.
But what caught my attention this time was Bezo’s invitation to actor William Shatner (Star Trek’s Captain Kirk) to be part of the crew. I thought it was an interesting marketing ploy but it was Shatner’s comments after he completed the trip that made me stop and listen. His response was quite touching:
“You look down — there's the blue down there and the black up there. There is Mother Earth and comfort and is that death? Is that the way death is?
It was so moving, this experience. It's so much larger than me and life. It hasn't got anything to do with little green men. It has to do with the enormity and the quickness and the suddenness of life and death.
What I would love to do is to communicate as much as possible the jeopardy, the moment you see the vulnerability of everything. It's so small. This air which is keeping us alive is thinner than your skin.”
David Yaden, a psychiatry and behavioral sciences research fellow at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, published an article in 2016 with colleagues on “the overview effect” experienced by many astronauts. It is an overwhelming feeling of seeing Earth from space. The awareness that all that we care about is encompassed in this small distant globe prompts these feelings of awe and self-transcendence.
I’m always awed by photographs of the view of earth from space. I can’t imagine how it would feel to have this experience and I never will. What is most meaningful is Shatner’s realization of the fragility or impermanence of what we know as life and the interdependencies that sustain our life on earth. Interdependence and impermanence are the most impactful Buddhist concepts to me. They teach me compassion and gratitude in living my everyday life. Holding my niece’s baby, comforting a friend who lost a loved one, arranging flowers. Thankfully we don’t need to spend millions of dollars for a 10 minute ride to the edge of outer space to experience this. There are unique moments that we experience every day of our lives that allow us to internalize these concepts. The Nembutsu allows to be grateful for the lives we have – treasuring the moments on earth that are both perfect and imperfect.
Eternal Now
By Rev Kenryu T. Tsuji –The Heart of the Buddha-Dharma
In the beginningless, endless flow of time
each life is a mere ripple,
existing only for an instantaneous moment
and disappearing forever.
But each life is a unique experience
with beauty and truth, all of its own
with no identical counterpart in history
and none absolutely the same in the future.
Your life, my life-
is attuned to the rhythm of the cosmos
and to the heartbeat of reality.
Each life exists in the Eternal Now.
Each idea that is thought,
each word that is spoken
each action that is taken,
changes the whole pattern of the universe
for the universe is interdependent.
Think, speak and act, then,
always in the eternal now
with compassion and understanding
for your own enlightenment
and for the enlightenment of all sentient beings.
