I wake at dawn. For a few moments before my mind begins its habitual chatter, like the rustle of yesterday's newspaper, I am simply awake without thought... Listening to the faintest sound, a seal barking far away over the water, then beyond the faintest sound, I hear the throbbing depths of silence... I follow that throb to the horizon of hearing, deeper within than the mind itself... Truly listening, there is no place but the present moment, therefore no time... Then, right outside my window, a raindrop, and the universe trembles.
Dawn's misty silence,Only one thing prevents me from doing this meditation each morning: the concept of "doing meditation."
changed by the first robin song
to deeper silence.
* * *
During lunch break at work, amidst several busy projects, I take a short walk in the park. I glance up at the cloudless sky. How often have I looked up into these sapphire depths: so freely bestowed, costing nothing. Yet now, in this momentary window of grace, blue-sky-gazing is profound sadhana, spiritual practice.
The sky is usually like the background to my thoughts. But now, thoughts fade into that blue abysmal delight, which outshines them and stains my whole attention. I don't suppress my thoughts; I simply don't cling to them, because focus has melted into the marvelous zero that encircles all the hosts of invisible stars. Thank you sky. Now you are my spiritual practice.
Looking into that hollow radiance, I pass through a vanishing point, my subjective eye disentangled from every object. I am intensely aware yet un-concentrated. Hundreds of tiny muscle fibers relax in my face. The gentle smile I felt when I was a sleeping infant returns to this old body. Then I close my eyelids to discover.... the same vastness inside!
Gaze into your heart.
Touch a deeper wider sky.
Jewel of emptiness.
* * *
All my life I've been climbing: toward higher education, higher esteem, a pay raise, upward mobility, uplifting thoughts, up-scale neighborhood, higher tax bracket, higher state of consciousness, seventh heaven, cloud nine, the risen life! No wonder I'm weary. I'm always fighting gravity.
But tonight I lie down, spreadeagled on the cool grass in my back yard, gazing at nameless distant worlds. They come very near because there is no mind, no belief between us. For a few minutes, I'll take no thought for tomorrow. I’ll just get down, stay low, be fallen. I'll commit the great American sin: doing nothing.
Thinking fades as I shift attention to my breath. It kneads my flesh. Blessed weight, grounded, skin to sod. Suddenly, a revelation of the commonplace. Why did I never understand this before? I don't need to fight my heaviness. I give in to gravity! I won't even call it gravity. That's too weighty. I 'll call it earth's prayer for my body as she holds me to her breast.
This body is blessed matter. Mother-mater. A ripple in the vast swell of dark energy that rolls across the cosmic sea. I am awash in star-waves, and they too are part of my flesh, part of the same current that connects me to this planet. Where does my body end and her's begin? Who needs to ascend? I am already plummeting upward through the heavens. Blessed fall! The billow of my merest atom embraces the vastness beyond Andromeda, to gather all in all, enfolding all, in the infinite curve of Presence.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. How strange that we save these words of life for our funeral.
I've stood up so long.
Now, star-dazed in dewy grass,
I am so fallen!
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