Here I am, sat at my desk, writing another post to share with you.
It’s all so ordinary, but then again:
I’ve eyes to see
I’ve ears to hear
I’ve a tongue to taste
I’ve hands to touch
I’ve a nose to smell
And a heart that keeps beating.
But of course all of ‘this’ is obscured by our thinking.
Imagine it: no (thinking) mind.
There would be just this moment, not superimposed with our likes and dislikes, our stories and all that we’ve been conditioned to believe.
To be honest, even these few words don’t do justice to what I’m trying to share. The absolute, enlivening sense of awe is something we rarely experience. If we do, it’s hard to describe and mostly it’s in doing something without motive or desire, and where our soul is connected at the deepest leve. It might be art, caring for someone or, as ordinary, as riding a bike.
I’ve heard it said that this state of bliss-consciousness would render us somnambulists or robots. I don’t disagree but then again, as human beings, we’re innately wired to move when we need to move, react to danger and move through life with no effort. Yes, we think our mind is supremely important — and it is on a very superficial level — but then again, it gets us into so much trouble.
Think about these few lines:
“All formations are impermanent.
This is the law of appearing and disappearing.
When both appearing and disappearing disappear,
Then this stillness is bliss.”
It’s almost insuperable for our hard-wired self to understand what this is pointing to. But if you hold fire with your judgment, you understand (without much ado) that everything goes the same way — i.e. ashes to ashes, dust to dust — and it’s only our (small) self that holds to the notion of form being form.
You might wonder (I’m sure) what any of this mumbo jumbo has to do with living a normal life. Not much, I’m afraid to say. For most people, they remain trapped in the notion that the separate ‘I’ is real, even though they cannot locate it when asked to do so (“It’s in my chest area…!”); and only when the ‘I’ falls away do they start to apprehend that life isn’t one thing over an other — i.e. dualistic — it’s everything.
As a practical exercise, the next time you’re asked a question, rather than reacting to your inner monologue stop for a second and ask yourself if you feel, hear and smell the words that make up the question. In other words, what do the words mean absent your overlayed thinking?
You don’t know?
If nothing else, you might actually hear what’s being said, and not what your inner voice tells you.
Blessings and deep bows.
Photo by Mihail Ribkin on Unsplash