Welcome.
This is a meditation about expanding your perceptions,
About finding context,
Distinguishing figure and ground,
About recognizing that we exist within a much larger body of life across space and time.
We are taught to see detail,
To see an instance of whatever we are observing.
We seek nuance,
Subtlety,
Seek to see the most minute peculiarity,
And that can be quite productive and quite useful.
Seen in this way can be a wonderful doorway into meditation.
But today I invite you to shift the perceptions of your senses from the intimate details of a sight,
A sound,
A touch,
To all perceptions of that sight,
Sound or touch,
Across all animals,
Perhaps to the reiteration of that sight,
Sound or touch as it echoes down the long corridors of time.
Perhaps you might not just see trees,
But see forests,
And through a forest perhaps find a connection across space to the life of all forests everywhere,
From lush Amazonian jungles to struggling stands of trees at the edge of permafrost,
To a timber line on the side of a great mountain showing a boundary between realms of possibility.
You might also expand your perceptions not only across space,
But across time,
From that forest watching from the shoreline as the first creature crawled onto dry land,
To the forest sitting under moonlight as the first humans took a tentative step onto our Earth's moon.
Or as Keats puts it while listening to the song of a nightingale,
The voice I hear this passing night was heard in ancient days by emperor and clown,
Perhaps the selfsame song that found a path through the sad heart of Ruth when sick for home she stood in tears amid the alien corn,
The same that oft times hath charmed magic casements opening on the foam of perilous seas and fairy lands forlorn.
Teachings,
Knowledge,
Wisdom are transmitted in this way,
Transmitted in flashes of learning we open to when we hear the song of a bird and wonder who else has heard the selfsame song that found a path to our ears.
What did it mean to them?
Were they comforted,
Kept awake?
Did they wonder about you and what you were feeling as the nightingale sang?
What else has heard that selfsame song?
How many times has it pricked the ear of a predator?
Did it soothe wild beasts?
Did another nightingale respond,
Call in response,
A chant in the forest of the night?
What do you want me to say?
You This is Sutra 90.
Radiant One,
Please listen to me.
The essence of all teachings is right here if you open your eyes.
With a soft and steady gaze,
Look out upon creation.
Receive waves of light as they enter your eyes,
Singing of infinity.
The light touching the back of your eyes is immortal,
Born in the primal sun.
Be present with this enlightenment.
This is the ancient knowing,
A sanctuary that is everywhere.
Galaxies are flowers on this altar.
Photons of light can travel for a billion,
Billion years,
Waiting to enter an eye,
To excite a cell,
To be perceived,
To be known,
To be recognized,
To impart an image to a brain,
Waiting in anticipation of light.
There might be a time when you notice a dog glancing at you,
And rather than that particular dog you might see thirty thousand years of companionship and love.
You might live with a cat,
Might observe it,
And see ten thousand years of domestication fall away as its stalks pray in that self-same way.
Life here couldn't have remained this way.
You you Perhaps you have been witness to the birth of a child And as you look you start seeing not just that particular baby being born But also all beings everywhere being born Perhaps all beings being born across all time an ancestral progression you you you Another time you might find yourself alone at night in the wilderness a cloudless and moonless night You under the boundless field of stars You might see not just that particular night sky,
But all night skies across all of time you might gaze at the germinal flash of creation Might watch stars emerging in immense stellar nurseries Might attend to the glare of Novi as stars die You might bear witness to planets coalescing out of the dust of antecedent stars you you you You might touch a tree and wonder to yourself why it feels so good to us to touch a tree Maybe it's because our hands evolved to grasp them Maybe because the life within is so different from ours and also exactly the same Maybe because that touch of hand to tree is touching time Touching soil and sun and seasons of rain Maybe it's love you you you You might perceive any particular thing and suddenly notice the essence of it is detached from matter the specific form you're seeing dissolves and somehow somehow You're seeing through that form into eternity In these moments you receive the transmission Might you open yourself to these transmissions These connections across space and time linking you with the life of all This is the ancient knowing a sanctuary that is everywhere Galaxies are flowers on this altar On this altar you you you you you you you you You might now begin to find your way back from this journey of knowledge and connection you might follow your breath back a breath shared across so much time so much space across so many living things Let it carry you as it is carried so many others Bring yourself back now to this page in the book we are writing together before it is inevitably turned This page we have shared for a few moments As so many others have also shared and so many others will share in untold times to come Remember that you can always find this meditation again You can sit in an open space with your eyes wide open Just gazing in a state of ambito Receive light color movement shapes As if you were newly born to this world and all sights were new Welcome back You
