knowing

here it is

 

 

I don’t know what it is.

 

I can’t meet it face-to-face.

I can’t turn my back on it.

 

It’s impossible to flee from it.

 

If, by some wild grace

(I don’t know what that is, either)

it turns its all-knowing eye upon itself,

the default idea of duality

(by which I mean the unquestioned compulsion to label, define and separate)

vaporises.

 

Even the concept of ‘one’ is clearly one idea too many.

 

Knowing without a centre, without a knower,

knows. 

 

It excludes nothing.  It has no preferences.

 

Separation ceases.

 

The old urge to know what it is,

how it is, why it is,

has become irrelevant, obsolete, laughable.

 

I say: here it is.  Show me how you can possibly ignore it.

 

 

– ml

2021

 

 

Painting by Michael Leunig, Desert Song Man

leunig.com.au

 

 

creation is a selfless selfie

 

Echoes from Emptiness: Photo by Miriam Louisa Simons - Lanzarote aquascape

 

the seeing of It:

the ripples and reflections
the surface and the cool depth
the sun-snatching edges and the calm continuo
the tones, textures, colours

 

the watching of It:

the naming and the recalling
the emotional embroidery, the visceral memories
(pain and pleasure both flushed my cheeks
on that windswept isle in the Canaries)

 

the knowing of It:

all that unfolds before, behind, within and throughout me
as this world I call ‘mine’
shimmers fluidly in a center-less, owner-less
wideawake Aware-ing

 

I am Not,
but the Universe is my Self.
– Shih-T’ou, A.D. 700-790

 

Image – swimming pool reflections captured on a long-ago vacation; Lanzarote, Canary Islands

 

stopping the talk, shutting up at last

115

knowing, sentience, awareness

these are words for IT that utterly fail
to define IT
“The word is not the thing,” said Krishnamurti.
“The word is not the no-thing, either,” echoes Emptiness

knowing that includes no
knower
sentience that includes no
perceiver
awareness that includes no
me

knowing that includes no-thing
known
sentience that includes no-thing
sensed
awareness that includes no-thing
experienced

these are concepts dancing around IT
spinning, dyeing, patterning,
weaving, on the loom of
objectification,
mind’s exquisite tapestry

~

stopping the talk, shutting up at last

there’s just this

melting moment

this

pointless and placeless

peace

~