the Unborn

the unborn flower of nothing

 

if you want to know
the Unknowable start by
throwing out the absolute
and the relative and
everything between

and should you be blessed
with the capacity to survive
the free-fall
of your o-so-precious
intellectual infrastructure
into roaring silence
into spaciousness
into stillness

then you’ll know that Knowingness as
“the unborn flower of nothing”
and you’ll be its own soft echo
as it sings its eternal song
to itself

 

Echoes from Emptiness - the unborn flower of nothing

 

Who would dare to go nameless in so secure a universe?
Yet, to tell the truth, only the nameless are at home in it.

They bear with them in the center of nowhere the unborn flower of nothing: 
This is the paradise tree.
It must remain unseen until words end
and arguments are silent.

– Thomas Merton

 

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year. May your life blossom on the paradise tree, fulfilled and at peace in every way. You are so loved!

Image source unknown – if it’s one of yours please let me know so that I can give proper credit.

prajñāpāramitā

calligraphy by Jayarava - prajnaparamita

always at home
in this inescapable
bright unlit luminescence

this crucible of Creation:
Mother of time and space;
vast unknowable knowingness

always at rest
in this ultimate abode;
unassailable, yet ever available

prior to the mind
container of consciousness –
beyond the concept of beyond

always at home, always at rest
always already
p e r f e c t

. . .

Calligraphy credit

About prajñāpāramitā – here and here

here I is!

326

Earth’s summer breath embraces the coolness of the pre-dawn atmosphere and for an hour or so reveals itself as soft mistiness. Through the big trees camellia blooms are showing pinkly; there’s a tree covered in huge scarlet trumpets and another clothed in a purple so intense it could explode:

Echoes from Emptiness: Jacaranda in full bloom, NSW, Australia

 

I sees but does not watch

I hears but does not listen

I feels but does not touch

I tastes but does not eat

I smells but does not inhale

I is freedom without the ‘from’

I perceives but doesn’t conceptualize

I has never been born and can never die

I is the still, silent, ubiquitous point at the centre of the spinning world

I has never believed one single belief nor thought one thought nor made one choice

I is amoral, innocent, unconditioned intelligence which has nothing to do with intellect

I is joy without cause

I is love without object

I is what one is
and what all sentient beings are
bottom-line,
fundamental,
I-ness
I-ing

 

(as the perfect purple of a Jacaranda bloom)

Image source

 

ageless unborn awareness

284

My mother celebrates 90 orbits of the sun today.
Hale and hearty – if stone deaf and shorter than before,
she embodies the wideawake knowingness that what she IS
has never been born and will never die:
ageless unborn awareness.

It took a while, but daughter can at last confess that she’s a chip off the old block.

~

how can the Unborn be extinguished?

175

Sentient beings seem to share an inability to contemplate the likelihood of their death, let alone its inevitability – even on their deathbed.  Most people put this down to fear of the unknown.

Might it be different if they had, by great good fortune, discovered that what they essentially are can never die, for It was never born?

And might those who end this life-experience be the ones whose forgetting of this Knowing is less dense?

My mother bows her head in deep respect when a suicide is reported to her.  She expresses no regret or bewilderment.  She always senses the bigger picture, yet her heart overflows with compassion.  Her untutored wisdom awes me.

~


intellect has little to do with intelligence

18

the intelligence of the spacious energy system called body-brain
is the unborn intelligence of Life;
it’s non-personal and unconditioned

intellect, however, is measurable, trainable and indispensable;
we need it to operate in the world: memory, habit, discernment …
and we like to think it’s ‘ours’

intellect has little to do with unborn intelligence
but it can spin concepts that might be useful pointers
towards that immeasurable, unknowable movement

(to what better purpose could an intellect be directed?)

~