Plop!

 

I once thought silence was empty and stillness was quiet. But by the breath of the Beloved, I now know that silence is a billowing storm of joy, stillness a rosary of seven bursting pomegranates.

Being with the Teacher is not like taking lecture notes at a university. It is more like drawing dangerously close to an elk in the forest, inhaling its musk, hearing its teeth munch fiddlehead ferns. A Guru exudes wildness.

When he touches your chest with his gaze, the void explodes into a blossom filled with inebriating nectar. The universe turns inside out, scattering golden pollen from the stamen of a dandelion full of stars.

It happens in the body, not the mind, because the lethal sweetness of grace annihilates thought. And when there are no concepts, what is the difference between God and flesh, seer and scene, a moonbeam and a broken heart? Phenomena appear separate, but they are only held apart by a veil of abstractions.

Most words are withered husks. But not the words of the Friend. When you liberate those words from their meaning, you taste the juice in their sound.

This is why, throughout the ages, bewildered lovers gave up books of philosophy, and escaped from the classroom into the woods. They gained enlightenment by smelling jasmine, stroking the black down on a raven's throat, or hearing a frog plop into a pond.

Friend, if you pay attention, the tiniest creature will teach you everything!