Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Whole Lot of Noise About Silence

"the perspective of eternally free open space"

So, here we are...

Any minute now, something could go in a direction radically different from the blue birds engraved on the compass of fond expectation. One minute you are watching ribbons float from your beloved's perfect tresses while the music swells. The next minute parts of you are flying away, clutched in somebody's talons. 

Bees go heavily armed to extract nectar essences. Flies go unarmed to dance the fandango on shit. You can examine fright and flight on land sea and air, but sooner or later, everybody gets trapped in the long second that lasts forty nine days. Since we are supposed to be Buddhists, we are supposed to practice that long second. Target practice and shadow-boxing. Since we are supposed to be Buddhists, we are supposed to meditate.

So, meditation....

How do you begin or end that which has no beginning or ending?

A lot of people spout a lot of nonsense about meditation: a whole lot of noise about silence. The very best authorities on the subject tend to regard things rather more simply. The very best authorities promise that if you just ride the bus without concepts for a week, a fortnight, or a month, then you will never, ever have to go anywhere on the bus. 

The bus will not depart for elsewhere. Maybe the bus will be frozen like the frozen pixels of the bus, above. The frozen pixel bus freezes and thaws itself automatically. Tell me: how could you possibly ride this frozen pixel bus? This shining, empty, temporary bus cannot take you anywhere.

A click makes it all disappear.

So, meditation...
I must confess I never gave it very much thought.


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5 reader comments:

Anonymous said...

The form of meditation I like best is contemplation. I've always got a Dharma subject/topic or sutra passage simmering away on the backburner.

Unknown said...

What practice do you engage, if not meditation?

Editor said...

oh, whatever seems right at the time...

Unknown said...

Looks like the road up to the Sangla Valley in Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh. My wife was driving this road in our jeep a few years ago and a cow literally fell out of the sky, landing on the road in front of us. Fortunately, she hobbled up and carried on looking for more grass on the mountainside!

Editor said...

Only one umbrella I know of is useful when it begins raining cows.