ease returning

On Saturday I was with the Sangha, on Sunday with the Camera Club, and today I took photos of a get together after a cremation. So there has been social interaction - and I have now been distanced from the easy peace of retreat. Exposure to the dharma will bring me home again.

The following quote from Osho was in my Facebook page.

"Thoughts can create such a barrier that even if you are standing before a beautiful flower, you will not be able to see it. Your eyes are covered with layers of thought. To experience the beauty of the flower you have to be in a state of meditation, not in a state of mentation. You have to be silent, utterly silent, not even a flicker of thought – and the beauty explodes, reaches to you from all directions. You are drowned in the beauty of a sunrise, of a starry night, of beautiful trees."

The exploding beauty experience is what I call the numinous. This involves being in the Zone (no-self and beyond space and time) from which the muse’s messages are leaked into the attention centre which is the seat of consciousness. Mind and body are ticking over gently in the here and now. I have laid down my burden and left my troubles on the door step. There is the peace that passes all understanding.

But nothing lasts. For most of my time the self is active and the mind is replaying stories from the past and building stories about the future. Mostly, in my case, the stories are bleak, pessimistic and give rise to dis-ease, anxiety and panic. BUT things are not now as bad as they were. Mindfulness practice has made it possible to notice the miserable stuff about to begin and to nip it in the bud.

walking meditation

It is Spring. While doing walking meditation with the Sangha I was up close and personal with the buds of an apple tree. There was a wordless appreciation of (a) the cosmic life force getting ready to swell the bud and generate a new branch and (b) the harnessing of the energy in the sunshine. As Carl Sagan said, “We are star stuff harvesting sunlight.”

After the walking meditation there was a session of speaking and listening from the heart. Some people had positive experiences other had negative ones. Two people were in tears but it was not clear whether these were of exultation or grief. The Catholics talk of the gift of tears.

The camera club people and the cremation crowd were not there to think about the dharma. The camera people were reviewing each other’s pictures from the last three shoots. There was a covert desire to capture the numinous wow factor in our pictures – with and without Photoshop. But on the whole we enjoyed the mutuality of DOING the photographic thing. It keeps us gainfully busy.

The cremation crowd did not have anything in common other than contact with the deceased who had just celebrated her 100th birthday. The Minister had not known the old lady so he cut and pasted on the standard Church of Scotland funeral procedure. Afterwards there was soup and a sandwich at a local hotel. The seating arrangement did not encourage mixing. I got the impression that there was a lot of trivial chit chat, and a taboo on talking about life and death.

Aha –
The mentation has run itself dry.
The muse has been busy.
I have been in the Zone with no-self.
The existential ease is returning.