Uradiance

  Your point of view and my point of view are equally "right" and equally insignificant facets in the dazzling holographic diamond of inter-radiant opposites.    Whatever is, the opposite also is, simultaneously arising. Yet neither of these little flickers of local light is Truth. Truth is what illuminates the entire jewel.    If we spent as much energy expanding into the Whole as we spend constricting ourselves to a point, each of us could illuminate the wide world with one silent glance, one gentle touch.    This is the breathing of grace: to expand into wholeness, then to exhale, fall, and break into bodies, incarnating All in each photon of joy, each tear of pain, each trembling seed of beauty. It is effortless. It is not an intention but a happening. It has already happened.   As knowings, we are very very small. As Beings, we are vast beyond imagining. We include each other. This is my New Year's prayer. It has already happened. ...

To those who are alone tonight, please understand that we are all alone, yet we share one beaten heart. To be alone is our core, our essence, yet this crystal solitude encircles the stars. The moon is always full three inches above your crown. The sun is always rising one inch in front of your heart. The wild constellations, those enormous black animals, roam and graze among the flowers of your body. Be plowed and furrowed and sown again until the seeds in your numb places burst. Find the courage to know perfect intimacy in aloneness. Let your most silent question go unanswered tonight, like a hollow sky containing both midnight and dawn. If you need a friend to tell you what will become of this world or where your path is leading, don't wait. Draw near to your own lips and listen to this breath. We all meet here, strangers and pilgrims. In the cavern of a Kiss, there are never two.

  Your point of view and my point of view are equally "right" and equally insignificant facets in the dazzling holographic diamond of opposites.    Whatever is, the opposite also is, simultaneously arising. Yet neither of these little flickers of local light is Truth. Truth is what illuminates the entire jewel.    If we spent less energy constricting ourselves to a point, and instead, let ourselves expand into the Whole, each one of us could illuminate the world with a silent glance of beauty, a gentle touch of joy.    This is the breathing of grace: to expand into our wholeness, then exhale and fall and break into bodies. Let the particular incarnate the All in each photon of light, each electron of bliss, each tear of pain, each seed of beauty. And it is effortless. It is a happening. It has always already happened.   As knowings, we are very very small. As Beings, we are vast beyond imagining. We include each other. This is my New Year's prayer...

  If it is true that the black hole at the center of the galaxy, the dimensionless point at the core of a proton, and the ayin-soph in the center of an electron each contain the total information of the cosmos, then it follows that your great grandfather smells like a mushroom, his roots entangled in mycelium-darkness under the Winter forest. What more proof do you need that the alignment of planets and stars is insignificant compared to the blinding diamond laser of joy that fountains out of the earth up your spine? Just pause for an instant between breathing out and breathing in, which is to say, between the timeless beginning and the eternal end. Then you will comprehend the logic of next Spring.

The bones of heaven are the bones of the earth. There are things that cannot be told, that can only be breathed. There are things that cannot be breathed, that can only be held in the stillness between this breath and another. There are things that cannot even be held, that must be let go, scattered out of the heart, the stars, the faces of all the children, the countless miracles of the sun in frosted alfalfa this morning. Look down. The bones of the earth are the bones of heaven. Painting by Andrew Wyeth

  "My soul doth magnify the Lord." I love these words. The human soul, or individualized atman, is not merely the servant of God, or the seeker of God, but the magnifier of God: a crystal prism of Christ-all consciousness channeling an invisible ray of divine energy into this rainbow incarnation, magnifying God into You, as embodied radiance, at once completely unique and yet a hologram containing every "other" particle of creation. I wish You not just to Have a wonderful Christmas, but to Be a wonderful Christmas. Peace.    

  Mid-Winter morning. A befuddled kitten marvels at the fallen whiteness, and the pawprints that seem to follow her everywhere. A junco, perched on the snowy head of Francis, patiently waits his turn at the feeder. Sunrise in scattered angel wings flecked on a frozen pond. Cherubim thirst for a body like yours, made of vanished galaxies, yet casting a shadow. They wonder how leaves feel skittering down a sidewalk, how, when you rest in your own peculiar rhythm, your work is stillness. They envy the way you find the nest inside the egg, a mother's womb encircling her savior. They worship an infant too. Any child will do, which is the whole point, isn't it? The triumph of birth despite the poverty of Winter light? It happens in a Palestinian haybarn, or a tenement in the South Bronx, the name of the baby, Miguel  or Jesus, JaDawn or Billy Bob. If there were no Christmas,  you would have to invent one just to remind your...

The simplest meditation happens when you hug every cell of your body. They all dissolve in one gentle breath. There is no other. Consuming the thinker in her own sacred flesh-flame is called the opening of the heart. Now there is nothing left to do but frolic with stars and waltz with the moon through an ever-widening luminous swirl of compassion, which is the space where your darkness gives birth to the sun. Was there a path? Ah yes, it led you in all directions at once, like a small blue flower unfolding, touched by the dewdrop of bewilderment. Adoration is the fragrance of your Being. Now sing and play in the highest world, which is this one, where you learn to say Yes. Yes to aloneness, to snow, to the scarlet berry of pain. Where you learn to behold your face in the gaze of a stranger. Go outdoors and play in the rain. Play more intensely, as children do, making it your work. ...

  Photo by S. Prakasha

On his birthday, I honor the Teacher of my Teacher, who in fierce beauty and with feral grace lived deep the forest of India for many years, then emerged to become the Guru Dev, Sri Brahmananda Sarasvati, Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math. He passed away the very year I was born, yet his tidal wave of living silence flows down through thousands of years into the grail of my heart, and my life has been transformed by his disciple, who was my beloved Friend and Teacher. My Teacher never called himself "Guru." He always bowed down to his Guru Dev, as Guru Dev bowed down to his, in that never-ending bow of humility that flows back to the source of creation. So the mysterious current of lineage runs deep through the caverns of time to nourish divine Presence. This is a mystery that few of us can comprehend, and many reject. They may claim to need no grace, but not I. My need for grace is infinite. I bow to the ancient Now of the Teacher's breath, and the liberating g...

Random fluctuations in the Vacuum, waves of emptiness in silence, give birth to the universe. Intelligence, energy, and matter all the same stuff, flowering with inexpressible beauty into a galaxy, a snowflake, a holographic molecule of silicon crystal, the face of a child, the warmth of fur. And yet, somehow, the Inexpressible expresses itself, and reflects upon itself, in art, music, poetry, and simple acts of kindness. For me, this spontaneous blossoming of self-reflective beauty out of nothingness is not only proof of God, it IS God. Have a blessed Solstice and a wonderful Christmas. NASA Hubble photo, 'Cosmic Rose.'

   Don't tell me what love is. Just make me laugh for no reason. Make me cry at some ordinary beauty, lit by a dying sun, rooted in a perishing planet, where the bones of the earth are the bones of heaven.    

I'm tired of gods who come down from above and blind us with their fire. I'm waiting for a god born from the belly of an earthworm, with, instead of wings, fungi cilia flying underground through hummus, alchemizing the detritus of moldering bodies  to live again and rise into green nipples for the suckle of hummingbirds  and butterflies. That too would be a Christ, a Son, loam-born  of a single Mother. And the Father? He would stand Wordless, bewildered, barefoot in the mud, leaning on his ancestral hoe.     Painting: 'Man With A Hoe,' Francois Millet, 1863

  Rest in your heartbeat where you have no enemies, where no one is to blame, where the journey has not begun and even prayers for peace do not need speaking. Disperse into what you are before you breathe, sage smoke in desert air. Burn away and remember, your body is made of stars that vanished eons ago. Friend, rest here in your own rhythm where motion is stillness. This is the secret. A nest inside an egg. A mother's womb that carries her own savior. Be the seed of what you are seeking. Flower on a Winter night.

Heart has no metaphor. The rhythm is all, a beat that kneads its tenderness into each creature with an open wound, drumming a circle of comfort for the half moon, a circle to gather the ebbtide of a thousand suns, a circle that widens this moment into timelessness, awakening your ancestors, all their troubles and blessings. A drum circle in the heart to hug the unborn like sand grains melting back to Now, this bubble of hot glass blown into its globe of fragile beauty. What your heart beats is not blood only but the Milky Way, wild honeysuckle sap, the DNA of buffalo stirred into the batter within a cocoon, from which a herd of winged bulls emerges stampeding across the rainbow. What the heart drums is your pain, folded into the dough of your body, when risen, punched down to rise again into the warm loaf at the oven's core. What your heart beats is the ocean of motherhood saturating the placenta, regarded as waste by the man but food by the earth. It beats the plasma in a plastic ...

Return to joy. Don't try to find it in the future. Joy is not hope. Don't try to find it in the past. Joy is not an ancient story. And all stories are ancient, even the tale of yesterday. And please don't travel to a higher plane, an elevated state of consciousness, in search of joy. You will never find it there, because joy is not a "state" to be gained or lost. Neither is joy a condition or circumstance, the good fortune of some but not others. If you resent the joy of others, you will never find your own. Joy is what Existence is doing when You aren't doing anything to overshadow it, to stifle with anxious thinking what glows from the heart of Presence. "For which of you by anxious thought can add one inch to your stature?" (Mat. 6:27) Does the light of joy descend from "above"? No, it wells up like a tear from within. Joy is the light already embedded in darkness, the fragrance of the void, the music in the hollow of the bell not struck...

Mid-Winter morning, a befuddled kitten marvels at the fallen whiteness, and the footprints that follow her everywhere. A junco, patiently waiting his turn at the feeder, poops on the head of St. Francis. Sunrise in scattered angel wings flecked on a frozen pond. A nest inside an egg, a mother's womb encircling her savior. This is the birthday of seeing. Your evergreen eyes must bathe themselves in their own creation. Even the moon last night was loomed out of light from your gaze. Cherubim thirst for bodies like yours made of vanished stars, yet casting shadows. They wonder how leaves feel skittering down a sidewalk, how, when you rest in your own peculiar rhythm, your work is stillness. Seraphs can't decipher the hidden hieroglyph of twigs in a fire thorn bush. But the beak of a chickadee's may swallow the whole story in a single berry. Beauty isn't the color of your ribbon, your wrapping paper, the semipr...