Who has space for Emptiness? Who has time for Eternity?
Who among the lonely has room for Solitude? Whatever it
is that drives us out of the traffic jam behind our forehead
invites us into nothing but Light.
The Universe is pure fontanelle. The lid was never really
on.
Awareness makes an appearance, showing up in something novel,
dressed for the occasion. Infinite appearances.
Gravity and Light come together, birthing all, consuming
all, being all. To the Consciousness that is the subjective
dimension of Light, Gravity is but Primal attraction, Love
in the absolute raw, effortlessly outdancing Time.
As
Emptiness -- the Mahashunyata, or primordial Reality, of
Buddhism -- is made into a “nondualistic” goal
and metaphysical conversation-stopper, Time lines us up,
neatly sectioning our sky, leaving us as special nobodies.
Spiritual ambition does not die easily. So easy to make
not being special something special. Look around, look inside
your looking, look without looking, letting the ashes of
this and other Zenigmatic sentences dangle like smudged
sighs somewhere high above your neocortical scurrying and
worrying, slowly confettiing down upon the intruders stationed
in your head.
How does it feel to be food for thought?
We keep trying to think our way out, reducing ourselves
to lottery stubs in the Great Getaway’s spinning barrel.
Thus does Truth get obscured by well-schooled facts. Amnesia
sends Christmas cards to itself. Understanding chokes on
its own tracks. Is Earth but a cosmic reform school? Vagrant
phrases keep breaking in. Explanations only affirm the Mystery.
And we raggedly limp around our quarantined pain in poisoned
playgrounds, confusing numbness and detachment, faith and
hope, vacuity and openness, anger and aggression, guilt
and conscience, suffering and pain, wisdom and knowledge,
madness and sanity.
Emptiness appears to recognize the gravity of the situation,
trapping enough light to make something of Itself. All sorts
of somethings, somewhens, somebodies, a few taking shape
as astrophysicists dallying like voyeuristic sperm around
the perimeter of Black Holes, staying just far enough away
so as to not get sucked in, swallowed, consumed, emptied.
Few are those men who can give themselves fully to a woman
without castrating or eviscerating themselves. Virility
and vulnerability reach for each other in broken rooms,
trailing clouds of war. All the boys bleeding to death or
locked away in their headquarters, while the sky burns like
a screaming steak and the forests fall without a sound.
There are no winners in this overtime. Is designing umbrellas
for acid rain really progress? Spiritual seekers with polyester
smiles and orphaned shadows sit in the twilight, constipated
with hope. Cynics wait for them to crash and burn. Others
open the windows, letting the night rush in, blazing with
light. Darkness shining wild.
The Storm is already here. The empires have fallen apart.
Chaos is seeking annulment of its marriage to Order, claiming
mental cruelty. World leaders’ memoirs are on sale,
crayons sold separately. We sneer, but do not go to the
heart of our fear, hiding out in our slumber and greed,
ashamed of our real need.
Nevertheless, Silence never ceased. Nor did Love. Emptiness
never ceased. The Wilderness of Being, the Wonder that cannot
be imagined. Words come slowly now, like lead-dipped feathers,
dissolving in formless yet overwhelmingly tangible Presence,
this page now a sea of fast darkening white, this breath
not mine, this gap between you and me but an entrancing
fiction we read meaning into before it all shatters.
Only Emptiness has room for all, only Love can touch all,
only Silence can express all.
Stretching for one more sentence, I watch my speechless
words aflame in the Holy Wild, leaving no ashes, but only
gratitude.