morning meditation

Gautama saw this star

 

Clifton Mack: Jurlurrunha - Morning Star

 

Woken by a shift

in the Earth’s breath,

I sit in silence –

the pre-dawn hush

and my green tea for company.

 

In the east,

over the Pacific,

a bright star soars,

shaking off the shackles of night.

Its brilliance beggars belief.

 

I blink, I bow, a thought flashes:

Never forget that

more than two millennia ago

Gautama saw this star

and knew

 

{ as do you }

 

that nothing needed to be

understood, learned or believed

felt, integrated or expressed

fixed, healed or overcome

dropped or avoided

actioned or attained,

in order that his body’s naked awareness might meet itself

as the morning star.

 

{ Halleluja! }

 

the morning star rises

Image: Painting by Clifton Mack: Jurlurrunha – Morning Star
Clifton Mack is an elder of the Yindjibarndi people whose country is around the Millstream Tablelands in Western Australia’s Pilbara district.
See www.japingka.com

breathing with the lake

Here I am.
Sitting in Paradise
breathing.
Breathing the tide of clarity – in it comes
crystal-clear, out it goes,
often muddied by mind –
and I smile as this lifestream flows on
saturating each sensation, yet
paying no heed;
never cocking an eyebrow or casting a vote,
only ever reminding me:
Here I am
I-without-name-or-boundary
here and now
as This, and This and This.

The current version of Paradise finds me staying in a place of great beauty, beside a large lake. This entire year has unfolded as a series of deep retreats. It is a time for, and of, integration. Health issues are being lovingly tended and their emotional causality explored. It’s both harrowing and heart-swelling: Grace delivers whatever is needed, reminding me I signed up for the Full Monty.

Apropos of nothing (I never go fishing) these three small poems landed in my net:

Miriam Louisa Simons, Lake Macquarie, dawn

 

breathing with the lake

I am

Monet-mind beside the Seine

 

–

 

black swans glide by, curious:

pounding the lakeside path

a rainbow!

 

–

 

fog hiding the lake

one solitary oarsman

rows through melting space

 

Photograph taken from my zafu.

oh how I love being so deluded

 

Andrew Wyeth: Wind from the Sea, detail

 

I was asked to find my mind

and

I failed

I was asked to find my thoughts

and

I failed

I was asked to find my self

and

I failed

 

So then it seemed timely to try to find

the I

that was so successful at failing

 

ha!

it couldn’t be found

yet

it can’t be escaped

 

oh how I love being so deluded

that simply watching words leak out of a pen

can deliver shameless delight!

 

Image: Andrew Wyeth – Wind from the Sea
Tempera on hardboard, 1947, detail
[What moves – the curtain or the wind?]
Source: Washington Post

All writing on this blog leaks from the pen of Miriam Louisa Simons.  Over at my other blog this unlit light, you’ll find more of a smorgasbord of writing, including some of my own.
I chose this WordPress theme for its uncluttered minimalism, and because it’s responsive (i.e., it displays readably on all devices).  All the links that normally appear in a sidebar or footer are hidden behind the menu icon at the top of the page.  If you feel inclined to explore the offerings posted here since 2010, please click that icon.  You’ll also find a way to follow this blog by email there.  I promise you won’t be overwhelmed – emptiness has erratic and unpredictable habits.  Posts turn up.  I marvel.
– mls
Copyright © Emptiness

early this morning

 

Miriam Louisa Simons - Stained Glass Morning, Missa Gaia Series

 

p e a c e

palpable as the presence of a Presence

yet utterly ineffable

a benediction without diction

beyond the grope of thought

a blessedness without symbol

not experienced as other but

immanent

– inescapably so –

oh!

 

silence

 

immaculate all-adoring silence

 

Image: Miriam Louisa Simons – detail, Stained Glass Morning
Missa Gaia Series, 1987-88. Painting on silk, stitching.
Private Collection, Auckland New Zealand

wonderingmind studio

on christmas day in the morning

 

The Southern Cross and The Pointers

 

when you reach crinkled cronehood
days are as good as nights
as far as sleep’s concerned

wide-awake
I get up to pee

then I’m distracted by
the song of the Southern Cross
and lose my way back to bed

The Pointers are crisp and clear
SIT! they command
and who am I
to argue with the Cosmos?

oh joy and glee –

where else to be

but on a zafu

@3?

 

Image source – Sydney Observatory

One of the wonders of the night sky in the Southern Hemisphere (and greatly missed by its natives when they travel north of the equator) is the Southern Cross with its Pointers. In the image above, the Cross can be seen to the right, and the two Pointers to the left, indicating the position of true south.

all bugged up : breathing in…

 

Echoes from Emptiness - Yeshe Tsogyal

 

breathing in

I smile

[lungs rattling, terrorist bugs at war with antibiotics, cough like a dying camel,
green goo by the spittoon-full, aching chest, watery eyes]

 

breathing out

I smile

[silence, stillness, serenity, pristine perfect, incorruptible, immovable,
unknowable Awareness – – – utterly unaffected]

 

breathing in, breathing out

being breathed

and

being bugged

 

I smile

 

Image source

A deep bow to my Dharma namesake and inspiration, Yeshe Tsogyal

three haiku from cloud mountain hermitage

At the beginning of this month I moved into an old (but beautifully renovated) farm cottage on Kiels Mountain, on the Sunshine Coast hinterland, Queensland, Australia. It is high enough to attract rain and mist, which are welcome visitors so far as the rainforest and its inhabitants are concerned.

 

Echoes from Emptiness: Kiels Mountain rainforest hermitage

 

And in spite of being only a few kilometers from local villages, the beach and coastal busyness, it has the feel of remoteness. It is my Cloud Mountain, and I am a happy hermit. In my morning scribblings, haiku begin to appear:

 

Mistiness in close –
drowning out my loneliness,
a Currawong choir.

 

Lost; an innocent
here, in spacious aloneness –
something Wild finds me.

 

Alone in the bush,
befriended by Beingness,
I stop asking why.

 

Image credit