Wishing You A New Year

Wishing all of you a new year. Not a happy new year, just a new one. Because if you allow time to be new each moment, you cannot help but be happy, filled with the energy of re-creation. In the coming year, let us resolve never to be more than one moment old!

For if we carry the old year into the new one, if we carry over our old stories, doubts, grievances and politics, we cannot possibly be happy. No thought, no belief, no mental content can ever make us happy.

Happiness arises when the mind doesn't cling to any name or form. Then we taste the wine of silence between our thoughts. We soar into the empty blue sky of sparkling awareness. No thing makes our mind happy, because our mind IS happiness.

 

Please celebrate the New Year every moment, because the mind is done with time. Have a very new year!”



Photo by my dear friend Scott Waeschle, Comet and Milky Way, Owyhee Gorge, Oregon

 

The Day After Christmas

I want to worship

the next baby I see.

I don't care whether

it’s a girl or a boy,

brought forth in a stable 

or a subway station, 

rich or poor, amber, rose, 

or burnt umber.

I don't care any more

whether it’s your baby or mine,

or whether the mystery

is human or divine.

I just want to worship

the newborn.

I am just so hungry

for the bread of original innocence,

the fallen star of her face

gazing up at me.

I want to bow down and press

her butterscotch soles

to my forehead.

I want to give her the gift

of my golden laughter,

the frankincense of this breath,

myrrh that oozes from my

broken heart, I am just so

hungry to hear the suck of milk

from a nipple this morning,

the sound that makes

any morning holy.

I'd rather not wait for moons

and planets to align.

I'd rather not wait for the Messiah.

How many mornings have I

already missed her

looking for someone else?

I don't care any more

whether the mystery

is human or divine.

Just let me worship

the next baby I see.

Photo: my daughter Abigail, which in Hebrew means
"My Father's Joy."

Deconstructionist Christmas Parable

BOOK I

Chapter 1
I found Santa floating face-down in the cold water.

Chapter 2
I found Santa floating face-down in the cold water, again. He had been drowned in the darkest hour, just before dawn.

Chapter 3
It happens every morning, and Christmas is coming.

Chapter 4
My overweight, perpetually confused, crossed but brightly blue-eyed Siamese boy-cat does not appear, at first glance, to be a sociopath. In fact, he is timid and clumsy, and he flees at the slightest movement. Yet every morning before dawn, he drowns Santa Claus in his water bowl.

BOOK II

Chapter 1
Santa is Chester's favorite toy: an old cotton finger-puppet the size of a mouse.

Chapter 2
As I bow down sadly with a sigh to remove Santa from Chester's bowl at precisely 7 AM every day, I feel like Nietzsche.

Chapter 3
I wring Santa dry and lay him on the rug. Chester loves Santa. Once again the game is on, the game of paradox...

Chapter 4
... love and death, the gentle, the cruel, batting Santa Claus across the floor, tossing him in the air all morning, all afternoon. You might think a cat would realize, after walloping a limp mouse-sized body for hours, that its soul would not need dispatching. Yet in that hour when the whole world relishes the consolation of perfect oblivion, Chester silently and tenderly takes Santa in his teeth, steals to his water bowl, and drowns him.

BOOK III

Chapter 1
I found Santa floating face-down in the cold water. Eternal recurrence. Or maybe it's Camus I must reread, The Myth of Sisyphus. Some philosopher, any philosopher.

Chapter 2
As Christmas approaches and the nights grow longer, the national economy collapses, barbarians draw close to the gates of the empire, and the windows of human intercourse are closed by an invisible bureaucracy, I sense a parable here. Santa, floating face down. I feel like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, pointing at his pile of mashed potatoes and muttering, "This means something!"

Chapter 3
I rise from my bed and go down to the kitchen in Wintry darkness. The electricity is out. The heat is off. The muffled report of bombs shakes the ground as soldiers at a near-by Army base rehearse for perpetual war. Do I dare light a candle and gaze into Chester's water bowl?

Chapter 4
These events perhaps, like these words, are random bursts of the quantum vacuum, particles of the absurd, shards of a lost equilibrium flung backward and forward in time toward their final rest in entropy.  Why attribute motive to the repeated behavior of an imbecile? (I'm paraphrasing Shakespeare.) Why teasingly string random moments into a fantastic necklace of illusory causation, events that would otherwise spill and clatter in all directions across the cold empty floor of eternity, with the sound of fleeing glass slippers?

Chapter 5
I am hungry. I am hungry for meaning. Aren't you? Let us construct it, even if it isn't here. Out of mashed potatoes, if necessary. Ah, "necessity." Even that we must imagine. Let us imagine that there is a cause, an effect: that each Now follows another. Let us call one the past, another the present, another the future. Let us imagine there is a story.

BOOK III

There is another version of Book III, but it has been lost. Or burned by monks in Alexandria, about 300 CE. The lost ancient manuscript of Book III - this gives our parable weight - written by a prophet from the East, perhaps from Bactria, who journeyed across the deserts of Persia to lay his vellum masterpiece, along with a bowl of frankincense, at the infant feet of the doomed king. We must imagine this too.

BOOK IV

Chapter 1
Perhaps someone will say, "We Americans are all guilty of drowning Santa Claus in the waters of Matter." But that is a Gnostic vision too lofty for me. I need something simple, childish, full of hope.

Chapter 2
How about this? "Santa only seems dead, but he rises again each Christmas dawn."

Chapter 3
That really sounded stupid.

EPILOGUE

It's up to you. Tell me what this story means. I am hungry.



Photo: Chester hiding in our Christmas tree.

A Poem for Christmas from 'Wounded Bud'

Don't Believe

I don’t believe.

I don't believe in my heart,

yet it keeps beating.

I don’t believe in my hand,

yet it stirs honey into tea

and washes my grandmother's cup.

I don’t believe in the taste

of an heirloom pear

from a tree my father planted,

it is so sweet.

I gristle my fist around his original hoe,

and learn silent bending

from a gracious willow

without believing anything.

I don't believe in the hummingbird

asleep on a lilac twig, head cradled

on her own emerald breast.

Or in the silken cat slipping

through her element of moonbeams.

I don't believe in your eyes,

yet their gaze obliterates
my confusion.

Empty of every belief,

I can listen to the sound

of falling stars in my body,

like snow, God’s breath

brushing the alter of my breastbone.



Ink painting after Zhao Shao'ang, Sparrows in Snow

Winterspace

Walking through this field among a stand of old prairie oaks on a raw December day, I taste that experience again, where my own awareness and the space over the frosted alfalfa are one and the same clarity...

The stark beauty of negative space patterns the mosaic of branches and twigs, receding into infinite gray, resonant with invisible stars; and this space is my own pure consciousness. Within me and without me, the same expanse,  the whole planet poised in my own self-luminous mind...

And in the depths of this paradox, the same question haunts me as it did when the experience first dawned over 40 years ago in that meadow near my home outside Philadelphia, on the rolling dales of Chester County, Pennsylvania: Whose awareness? Mine or God's?

This singular momentous Now of consciousness has not changed, has not become a new moment, in over 40 years; perhaps not in a thousand years. Perhaps I tasted this crystaled transparency at some Cistercian Abbey in medieval France on a cold Winter afternoon like this one, walking, walking silently. Solvitur ambulando, said Augustine: "it is solved by walking."

I was a college student home for the holiday, chopping wood at the edge of the pasture, suddenly stunned by the clarity, the emptiness, the boundless transparency of pure awareness, glowing from its own groundless depth with a soft pearl light. I had to stop work and sink to my knees, giving thanks. But to whom, and with what words? I had no prayer to contain this silence, which I now call simply Presence. And I had no one to pray to, because this unfathomable Otherness was my own Self.

No tradition could console me with an explanation of this marvelous space that held the whole earth like a green jewel in an endless moment of glittering emptiness. After much searching, I finally found something like it in the writings of J. Krishnamurti. Years later I would find it in Eckhart Tolle, Thich Nhat Hanh, and the breath of the Master, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar; but in the early '70's I was alone.

I had been doing Transcendental Meditation for five years. I knew that it was this meditation practice that had opened me up and spilled me into the universe. And I knew, by the grace of my teacher, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, with whom I had personally studied, that this afternoon benediction over the Pennsylvania meadow was my own pure consciousness. For that is the promise and fulfillment of the teaching: with regular daily practice of Transcendental Meditation, the clear light of awareness will not only illuminate the silence of meditation, but the world around us, pervading trees and hills, clouds and stars... But that is all just an explanation, a series of thoughts in the intellect. And the intellect is so superficial, so puny, compared to the diamond solidity of pure consciousness.

Yet there's the rub! Nothing more abstract, nothing more no-thing, than pure consciousness. Yet when awareness dawns, nothing is more concrete! One finally has the courage to refer to no authority but one's Self. This silent explosion of Self-referral irradiates the universe, dissolving the mirage of the world into the ineluctable eye that sees, revealing this un-created abstractness to be more dazzling and tangible than any material object seen. Chitta Mani: jewel of awareness! All sparkling creatures suspended in the singularity of the diamond Self.

I had received this gift from the master, Mahesh; but as a product of my culture, I needed some confirmation from my own heritage. Because I am a Westerner, the only cure I could find for this poignant crystal arrowhead in my heart, bleeding light over the Winter fields that Advent season when the Presence first stunned me, was the Christian mystical tradition. I was not even a Catholic, but I left home and went to a Trappist Monastery. There, at St. Joseph's Abbey in Massachusetts, I met Dom Thomas Keating and Fa. Basil Pennington, two great Christian contemplatives who were also practitioners of Transcendental Meditation. They had bravely integrated this ancient Vedic wisdom into their Christianity. So I spent many months there, learning from their tradition as they absorbed the wisdom of the Vedic rishis. What sublime spiritual commerce and exchange!

 St. Joseph's Abbey, Spencer MA

It was a miraculous time, the kiss of East and West, and it was during those days that Dom Thomas and Fa. Basil first developed the steps of Centering Prayer, which was to become an important meditation movement in the Western Church. I remember sitting with Dom Thomas in his office, which was small and humble despite the fact that he was Abbot of the monastery. We discussed our meditation practice. He said to me, "The future of Christianity depends on whether we can integrate this into the Western tradition..." He believed that the early Church had established Christianity  on the contemplative experience of Presence, but over the centuries, dogma buried it.

I realized while chanting in the choir at the Abbey, walking in the cloister at dawn, and working on the monastery farm, that the Benedictine call to "pray and work" - ora et labora - was precisely the same teaching that Maharishi had given modern seekers: "meditate and act." This integration is the essence of the Bhagavad Gita. In chapter 2, verse 48, Krishna tells the warrior, Arjuna, Yogastah karukarmani: "With your mind established in yoga, the state of pure unbounded awareness, perform action."

Through combining vigorous daily work with periods of regular meditation, we integrate action and contemplation into one unified field of energy. Then we truly see: all activity arises in silence, and silence pervades all action. The clarity of pure awareness infuses our work. Finally, we directly perceive the space outside and the space inside to be one continuum, made of consciousness, for all energy, material or spiritual, is the same stuff. The matter of the earth is suffused and glowing with mother-of-pearl, the light of bliss, softly billowing from the emptiness of the void, which is not a lifeless void, but the living womb of awareness. And it is your own Self who shines from the heart of every atom...

The work of the monk blesses and heals the earth with each hoe's stroke in the garden, each drop of seed in furrow. Simply by being conscious in the midst of work, the contemplative envelopes the creatures around her in blessedness.

Yet I realized that Christian contemplatives desperately need to hang their experience of Presence onto the past, in an attempt to ground their consciousness in the story of Jesus. Any "religious" man or woman in whom the experience of God dawns will be haunted by guilt unless he or she can somehow relate it to the doctrines they've been taught.

As far as I could tell, this is how the Christian contemplative does it: The death of the egoic mind is the death of Jesus. In Transcendental Meditation, as in the Christian mystical experience, individual mind dissolves, is crucified, and resurrected as boundless awareness. But in that very boundlessness, ego must perish.

The Christian meditator dies at the center of the cross, the center of paradox, where past meets future, and spirit meets matter. The horizontal beam of the cross is time, the vertical beam is the metaphysical spectrum, from heaven to earth. But in pure Presence, these dualities are annihilated. Death at the center of the cross of paradox leads to enlightenment, a new life.

Our experience recapitulates the story of Jesus again and again, with each breath. Jesus dies and Jesus is re-birthed each moment, Light born from the womb of inner silence. Jesus represents the small "I," Christ is the "Am" of limitless being. Our contemplative life is the death of the "I" into the bliss of the "Am."

When we begin to live this experience not only in meditation, but through daily action, the Inner Light spills from within us, through our senses, into the world. Then we redeem the earth with every consecrated act of perception: tasting, touching, hearing, seeing Christ in all creation. Here is the divine sensuality of Jesus who said, "Take eat, this is my body," or the Hebrew psalmist who sang, "Taste and see that the Lord is sweet!"

The monks practiced deep meditation in their Offices of morning and evening prayer, then suffused their silence into the world through humble manual work, pouring heaven into earth, breathing Spirit into matter.

All great religions represent this process through their symbols and rituals. All religious stories are, in the final analysis, the story of our own enlightenment. As long as we choose to load our experience of Presence with the baggage of an old religious story, whether it is the story of Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed, Moses or Jesus, we can. And if we choose, we can spend lifetimes anchoring the present to the past...

But at some point we gently relinquish the religion of history, choosing quite simply to bathe in the splendor of Now. Then our religion is freed from the bondage of dogma, and it becomes a lovely poem. We can cherish the rituals, chants and stories as reflections of a Light that we constantly behold, shadows of a Life we perpetually breathe. For all religions symbolize the surrender of the ego to the mystery of unfathomable Presence.

Therefore, O my soul, standing in the windswept meadow, do not ask, "Is this God or my Self?" Allow the paradox of Presence to dissolve two into one and one into two. Let Pure Awareness descend upon these December fields, woods of oak and cedar, hills drifting cloud-like to white peaks in the boundless distance of this starry evening, all creation pressed from the crystal solstice of the birth of light. Let your silence be a Gregorian chant over the earth, each breath a Kyrie.



(Originally written in 2013 and published in the Tiferet Journal)

Solstice

"Sojourn and dwell in your essence, in your ground, and there God shall mix you with the divine essence, without the medium of any image." ~Meister Eckhart

1:48 p.m. Pacific Time, December 21, the solstice. Yet the shift and tilt of earth is really quite insignificant, and the sun is a small star, one among 400 billion in the Milky Way, which is a modest galaxy amidst the trillions clustered throughout the ever-expanding silence of the cosmic void. What is truly magnificent is not a tiny planet or a humble star, swept toward the rim of a dust-mote galaxy, but the awakening of this vast space as our own consciousness, the effortless grasp of it all beyond thought, enfolding it all with compassion, embracing it all in this brief moment of prayer.

Jai Guru Dev

Today, December 20, is the birthday of Sri Guru Dev Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math. Lttle known in the West, a silent saint of the forest, he was nevertheless the well of the holy tradition that began with Lord Narayana and streamed through the centuries, from sage Vashistha to Veda Vyasa, to Adi Shankara, to Maharishi and Sri Sri, and on to the ancient Presence of eternity in this very moment. He was the spiritual teacher of teachers who transformed the lives of millions. I do not bow to one who shines above me with the splendor of ten thousand suns. I bow to one who awakens the splendor of ten thousand suns in my own chest, and stirs the ocean of gratitude in every cell of my body. Jai Guru Dev.


Photo: my puja alter

Winter Between The Notes

Winter morning. Two junco songs. Wait, listen. The moment of silence between them is a note in the melody of Presence.

This momentous sliver of silence is nectar, pressed out and overflowing, inebriating, eternally healing. It happens between chirps, between words, between ideas. Drink from this source any time of day, the infinitesimal serenity at your windowsill. If humanity practiced such listening for brief moments, we could transform the world very quickly.

Yet our schools never taught us to drink from the well of silence. They taught us to hear only the chatter, and argue with it. Our teachers never said, "Hear the wordless wisdom where a thought dissolves, before the next thought arises."

This sacred crevice is the blink of an eye, the pause at the end of your exhalation, the gap of ten thousand light-years from one electron to another, the interstice where our universe ends in no-thing, before the next big bang. These are all the same sacred space, beyond duration, where worlds are born. It is the space where we are waves instead of particles, vibrations of each other.

If you want your children to be creative, take them on a journey into the back yard. Teach them to vanish through the portal where the next junco song has not arisen, Sabbath between rain drops. This brief Winter of listening is the well of creation, that was already full before God said, "Let there be light."


Art by Elizabeth Ellison

Don't Come Here

If you're seeking practical advice,

don't come here.

Practical advice is for

fixing your bicycle.

If you want a spiritual teacher,

don't come here.

I will only shout at you

because the coffee is lukewarm.

All I have to say is this:

breath polishes the body,

mantra polishes the mind,
inside and outside, the same glass.

Atoms are made of brilliant emptiness

solid as diamond.

Stop being educated!

Give up namarupa

To shatter the mirror of name and form.

Concepts will melt

in the ghee of pure sensation.

Words will dissolve

in the hum of bewilderment.

Meditation is fierce healing.

The enormous green jaws

of the praying mantis devour her lover.

You become softer than silk.

You become the night between

a spider's moon-lit threads.

The Goddess Kundalini

does not want to catch you.

She wants you to be free.

Photo by Pang Way

 

Hanukkah

Why does the flame
in the temple of your heart
keep burning
even when the mind
is an empty lamp?
Because yearning
makes you hollow,
and your spine is a wick
dipped deep into
the radiance that
overflows each cell
of your body.
Blessings of Hanukkah
and many other
miracles appear
when Being
kisses the flesh.




Painting by Elena Kotliarker

Grok

The old problem-solving model was to work from the analytic mind (manas), assembling the parts piece by piece until you achieved the Whole. The new way, which is really the most ancient way, is to work from the intuition (buddhi), seeing and grokking the Whole all at once and feeling it as complete, so that from the subtlest level of your feeling, which is very near the source of creation's energy, the Whole attracts the parts and completes itself. This is working with least effort for maximum achievement. But do we ever see this principle operating in nature? Yes, all the time. We just don't recognize it. The forms of matter are in the vacuum as waves of pure mathematical probability before manifesting as photons and neutrinos.The entire oak tree is in the acorn before it sprouts. The sparrow's heart sings in darkness, then there is dawn. Love the woods before you use the trees.

Photo by William Neill

Not Here

You're not here

to save the world.

You're here to discover

that you Are the world.

You are compassion.

You are perfect healing.

In you the mountains

are lighter than the sky.

Don't try to understand this.

Just fall in love with

yourself in every

pair of eyes.

Detail from Botticelli

 

In These Winter Woods

In these Winter woods the deer are not waiting for Christmas; they are Christmas. And you, faithful pilgrim of the seasons, are you waiting for the birth of astonishment?

From beyond the fiery rim of the cup that drips worlds, rays of grace fall into your body. One question remains: will you hold your last breath, or offer it in gratitude? The answer is how you do it now, how you rehearse for that breath with this one.

Both are the same, the breath of life and death, one Being, tilted toward itself in perpetual solstice. Cherishing a Winter moon in the hollow between your ribs, bright seed in virgin darkness, give back the night. Give back the night to what has never been created, for this also is you.

The incandescent silence in your secret core bears pangs of music, binaural dissonance of love made flesh. Not the flesh of God, but your flesh; not the gasp of Mary, but your inhalation, trembling all the starry harmony of human form.

Again and again, rehearse the gift. For this beating, this pulsation, this rhythmic story of birth, has never been about anyone else.


Photo taken on a hike, Mt. Rainier

Atma Tvam (a poem from The Nectar Of This Breath)

 

Atma tvam,
You are the self
in all creatures.
Love until there is
no other.
Let adoration be the fragrance
of your Being.
Sing and dance
in the highest world,
which is this one
where you learn to say
yes.
Yes to aloneness, to snow,
to the scarlet berry of your pain.
Where you learn
to behold your own face
in the gaze of a stranger.
Where you learn to frolic
as warblers and children
who carefully make frolicking
their business.
Now go out and play,
whether you have your
red boots on or not.
Play in the rain, play on ice,
risk amazement.
Love until there is no other.

December 12

Miracle of warm Spring dew
on Winter hills.
Juan Diego,
whose robe-full of
December roses
spills before the bishop,
revealing Our Lady's Aztec form
imprinted on Maguey cactus cloth,
thank you.
Mother Mary of Guadalupe,
pray for us.
Thank you.

   December 12, Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Assembly of the Wise

 

A discussion on the four keys to human virtue transpired in the Assembly of the Wise.

The post-modernist philosopher stood up and said, "The four keys are sex, food, money and death." The people applauded with great enthusiasm.

Next the moral philosopher stood and proclaimed, "The four keys  are prudence, temperance, harmony, and fortitude." There was a general murmur, because these words had not been heard for a thousand years and no one could quite remember what they meant.

Then the Yogi spoke. "The four keys to are dispassion, loving-kindness, non-violence, and contentment." Some of the people smiled, but the rest whispered among themselves. Finally someone said, "This is hardly philosophy!"

Finally the Fool stood up. He said, "The key to human virtue is being grateful." The assembly waited impatiently, then began to grumble. Someone shouted, "What are the other keys, Fool?" To which the Fool replied, "There are no other keys. Just gratitude, gratitude, gratitude, and more gratitude," to which the assembly responded with uproarious laughter.

When the uproar settled down, all the wise philosophers turned toward the Tattagatta, was was reclining on his elbow, listening. One of them addressed him. "They say you are the Awakened One. We haven't heard your opinion yet."

The Tattagatta gently smiled. With patience and dignity, he came to a sitting position. Then he stood. After a pause, he began to walk slowly through the assembly. The gathered guests all felt the strange sensation of the heart melting inside them. But they could not fathom the meaning of this, for as their hearts grew warm, their minds became mysteriously empty of all thought.

Then the Buddha, saying nothing at all, returned to his place, stood quietly before them, sat down, and reclined gently on his right side again, head resting on his elbow. There was a profound and glowing silence in the air.

Since no one else rose to interpret the Dharma, the Fool stood up again. The philosophers scoffed. He waited for their laughter to subside, then spoke.

"One who is awake needs no thought. One who is present requires no philosophy. The river flows all by itself, the moon rises and sets, weightless as a feather on a breath of air. The mountain has been bowing to the cloud for countless ages, and the cloud melts gently at the mountain's caress. How sweetly flowers spring up for no reason, and frogs sing songs without meaning.

"The active virtues of human life are standing, walking, sitting, and lieing down. If you stand, walk, sit, and lie down with an undivided heart, full of gratitude and dwelling without resistance in the present moment, and you welcome with a gentle breath whatever appears, whatever dissolves, well then, justice, wisdom, compassion and contentment, as will as the finest pleasure, will arise naturally in your body, without any discipline at all."

Log Out

 

People love to log in. I love to log out. For a little while I log out of absolutely everything. I don't just log out of facebook, and the internet, and my computer. I log out of the world. I log out of the mind. I log out of me. What's left? No thing.

You can't even call it being, because "being" is a concept and you've logged out of conceptual thought. That's why the Buddha says, "It neither is nor is not." So you'll just have to experience this for yourself and give it a name. Meister Eckhart calls it "the Godhead beyond God." The Yogis call it, "nirbija samadhi": seedless meditation. The Buddhists call it, "sunyata," emptiness, which of course has been completely misunderstood because we logged into mind and turned "emptiness" into an idea.

So forget all thoughts, names, forms, stories about the past or future, and just log out. Even a moment of this is eternity, because you've logged out of time. But don't sleep. Log out of sleep. Log out of dreams. You are pure awareness with no Of. You are the uncreated womb of Silence. And when you log back in, rebooting consciousness itself, you discover that logging out had a wonderful side effect. It polished the hologram of the cosmos, and spit-shined every star. Logging out refreshes the universe.

 

 

Image: HD wallpaper

Seedless

 

If you want a bitter
seedless life,
just keep identifying your
self as victim.
Keep blaming others
for your circumstance.
But if you want your
heart to melt into
the impeccable splendor
of the golden sun
and illuminate the earth
with courage,
take off the cloak
of your old story.
Step naked
through the portal
of the present moment
into a kingdom
where darkness sparkles
and silence sings,
because there is
no judgment,
and fear is swallowed up
in Love.

The Information Age Is Over

 

Now we pass from the Information Age to the Age of Unknowing. True teachers are not stuffed full of facts, but empty. Past and future events are devoid of substance, the present moment also a spark of the void. Wisdom does not tangle the mind in arguments, but dissolves thought into deepening silence, hollow yet resonant. Out of that silence, the world is born. A lightning bolt and a rose petal are both blazing swords that sever the sky into One. Write your name on water. Then drop learning, gaze into the palm of your hand, behold the mother of stars.



Sumi-e ink painting: Zen Master Hakuin's self-portrait.