Friday, July 22, 2005
Trinity
Today I was walking a path I often take, and as it is so familiar, I am able to simply follow the path without looking ahead. I find myself immersed in the experience of the path changing beneath my feet. The waves of corn wash past as I walk through the cornfield, the flowers and grasses dance past as I walk across the meadow.
My eyes relax, as if they are usually trying too hard to hold something. And this vision just moves past me, ever changing. And then I noticed something. If I look down, there is one feature that is consistent; this body, these bobbing feet.
And seen in this way, I find I am the centre of awareness that includes the body within itself, not the self which regards the body as it centre, itself. And I feel dizzy.
I have for a few years now been driven to scrutinise my experience by the sense that I am missing something. I once discribed this as like watching a television upside-down. Eventually you get used to it, that actors appear on one side when you are sure it is really the other side. And you no longer find it strange that everyone walks on the ceiling. It means you have to think a bit too much about what is going on, but eventually, that is just how it is. If you one day began to suspect that there was maybe a simpler way to see things, you might have difficulty seeing the very obvious, 180 degree mistake. And if you did figure it out, it might be a bit disturbing to imagine things the right way up.
This dizzy feeling is like seeing things turn over. My feet are at the top of my picture. I hang from the ground much like you imagine they do in Australia.
It felt like my soul noticing my body. My mind is usually there too, but it felt like closing the triangle, a holy, or whole trinity. A being comprised of three parts.
I recall a quote from my favourite zen master; All is constantly changing, except one thing. Can you find it? Of course, that one thing is always there. Even the body, I have noticed, changes, and it seems they eventually disappear. But in the truth of my experience, in what is given, it is there like the symbol of the eternal. It's image, I guess.
Today I was walking a path I often take, and as it is so familiar, I am able to simply follow the path without looking ahead. I find myself immersed in the experience of the path changing beneath my feet. The waves of corn wash past as I walk through the cornfield, the flowers and grasses dance past as I walk across the meadow.
My eyes relax, as if they are usually trying too hard to hold something. And this vision just moves past me, ever changing. And then I noticed something. If I look down, there is one feature that is consistent; this body, these bobbing feet.
And seen in this way, I find I am the centre of awareness that includes the body within itself, not the self which regards the body as it centre, itself. And I feel dizzy.
I have for a few years now been driven to scrutinise my experience by the sense that I am missing something. I once discribed this as like watching a television upside-down. Eventually you get used to it, that actors appear on one side when you are sure it is really the other side. And you no longer find it strange that everyone walks on the ceiling. It means you have to think a bit too much about what is going on, but eventually, that is just how it is. If you one day began to suspect that there was maybe a simpler way to see things, you might have difficulty seeing the very obvious, 180 degree mistake. And if you did figure it out, it might be a bit disturbing to imagine things the right way up.
This dizzy feeling is like seeing things turn over. My feet are at the top of my picture. I hang from the ground much like you imagine they do in Australia.
It felt like my soul noticing my body. My mind is usually there too, but it felt like closing the triangle, a holy, or whole trinity. A being comprised of three parts.
I recall a quote from my favourite zen master; All is constantly changing, except one thing. Can you find it? Of course, that one thing is always there. Even the body, I have noticed, changes, and it seems they eventually disappear. But in the truth of my experience, in what is given, it is there like the symbol of the eternal. It's image, I guess.
