313
What has neither parents nor offspring
yet knows existence as its family tree?
.
What has never had a mind to ‘make up’
yet sees everything directly and intimately
and acts freely, without choice?
.
What has no body, no form
yet the ten thousand things
and the ten thousand no-things
fit it perfectly?
~
299
Many folk express the longing to be able to draw or paint some-thing. They long to faithfully render a beloved face, or a favorite object, or the marvel of a landscape. Or, with the plethora of photographic devices now available, they eagerly capture moments both miraculous and mundane.
Might this have something to do with our innate longing for seamless intimacy with that apparent object or experience, with longing to know it, to be it, on the other side of conceptualization, categorizing, labeling?
.
unknowable knowingness
nothing that can be contained, it flows and ebbs;
calls itself perception or consciousness or awareness
or life or grace or destiny or God
the ‘ten thousand things’ are its toys –
its appearances rising and falling
wherever It casts its sensory antennae
is it not the ultimate
seamless intimacy?
~
264
everything one is aware of
– every one of those “ten thousand things” –
gets one’s attention
everything except Awareness ITself
isn’t that incredible?
.
What if all those ups and downs in The Grace Game (aka Snakes and Ladders) were the play of Awareness awareing ITself? What if they were immaculately and uniquely designed moves solely intended to wake the wee-me from its dream of being an independent player? What if there was no competition involved and the finishing point was actually the beginning of a new Game, one where the player now realizes that there’s only One Player and that the board, the dice (aka ‘chance’), the player and all those experiences – the good the bad and the ugly – are IT?
~
193
The brick paving in the little enclosed garden outside the sanctuary is alive with Life. Tiny, tiny toads, about the size of my little finger nail, are doing their thing. How they hop on those barely-there back legs! What power, what precision! What sort of a world is perceived by that minute nervous system?
Suddenly, this is there and that
and ‘I’ is toad toading . . .
Kookaburra starts cackling and breaks the spell;
goes off into great gurgling hoots of kookaburra-speak.
And again, this is there and that
and ‘I’ shakes with the cackles . . .
Life’s the only player here,
living the wild wonderment
of the ten thousand things.
~
echoes from emptiness 