My Mind Takes Off Her Clothes and Runs Naked Through the Meadow

My intellect wanted to pretend that it knew something important. So I divided space into seven planes. I separated emptiness into physical, astral, mental and buddhic worlds, calling some "gross" and others "subtle." I split no-thing into hierarchies of angels and bodhisattvas. I parted the sea of silence into ninety-names. Then I imagined seven lotuses blossoming in the body of suchness.

As I treaded water, going nowhere in the ocean of wonder, I pretended that I was on a journey, ever ascending into higher spheres of wisdom. One day I might reach the goal. Perhaps, I thought, when I get there, I will say something profound. Or I will just hum and call it "the original sound of creation." Then I will adopt a Sanskrit name and charge people $125 an hour to talk to me on the telephone.

But now I stare into the face of my cat, I listen to the song of a baby, I smell the first magnolia, and this little mind-bubble pops. No planes exist, no higher worlds, no hierarchies of celestial beings, no names of divine silence: only the wine of bewilderment. There is nothing to be attained in suchness. Just as it dances, withers, and dies, this body is already the perfect blossom of innumerable galaxies in boundless space.

My mind takes off her clothes and runs naked through the meadow. She will return, smelling of pollen and tadpole streams. When I need to concentrate, I don't call her. She is like a thistle in the breath of the wind. I let her wander til she finds me where I do not know I am.

This path is a circle, the circle a pulsation of its center, the center a dimensionless point, the point a seed of laughter hidden in a tear. That is why the Buddha, when asked for his final teaching, only held up a daisy and smiled.