Stay Om

Konoe Nobutada (1565-1614), Meditating Daruna, in which the calligraphy means, “Quietness and emptiness are enough to pass through life without error.”

When Bhodidharma, known as Daruna, brought Buddhism to the West, the emperor demanded an audience with him. An imperial scribe read a list of the emperor's merits. Then he asked Bhodidharma what merits he had achieved. Bhodidharma said, "I don't know."

In the bindhu between your breaths, just for an instant, be held in the gentle palm of desolation. Let your next inhalation be a wing of desirelessness  gliding up your spine, ringing the starry bell of night in each vertebra, turning the cells of your body into chalices of golden fire.

Then the imperial magistrate read Bhodidharma the royal laws and statutes, after which the emperor asked him,"What law do you follow?" Bhodidharma answered, "I don't know."

Gaze into the mirror of Seeing itself. Let radiant beams of emptiness hallow the face of the Invisible. Let your eyes be yantras that precede creation, opening a way to the darkness of love.

The exasperated emperor commanded the high priest to recite the central verses of holy scripture. Then he ordered Bhodidharma to reveal the most essential precepts of his own religion. Daruna said, "I don't know."

Words and phrases congeal out of pure silence to torture your mind with worry. Let them disperse into letters and syllables of delightfully meaningless but inspired phonemic vibration, the sounds a baby makes after drinking pearls of breast milk. Let this garland of angelic burps and giggles enfold your body with a fragrant circle of protection, each unfading petal a bija, sacred name of the Unknowable.

The emperor banished Bhodidharma from the capital and prohibited him from teaching anything whatsoever to the people. So Daruna wandered to a forest cave, where he sat quietly, staring at an empty limestone wall that seeped droplets of fresh water somehow sparkling in the dark.

Now listen down and undo the world. Listen to the hum where hearing arises. Let pure listening re-calibrate the wobble of each atom, healing the bodies of all sentient creatures.

In the solitude of his cave, Daruna said nothing, thought nothing, dreamed nothing. Yet he was wide awake. Thus the teaching of the Dharma spread rapidly throughout the land.

Can you breathe out everything you ever thought you were against, and surrender the argument? Cherish the subtle luminous flavor of silence. Resist not. If your restless mind must mutter some words, then whispef the great liberating maha-mantra: "I Don't Know."