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Rainy night
Rainy night
Evening storms began rolling in a little before darkness fell upon the slumbering neighborhood. Intricate shaped clouds filled the multicolored evening sky, tinted blue, grey, orange and green, with continuously changing shapes and tonalities. Spats of lightning backlighted the nebulosities while distinct roars of thunder echoed through the distance, seemingly bouncing between the clouds. The clouds, some dark, some bright, each reached out in the surrounding space with delicate tendrils and swirling whisps of gaseous moisture. Each portion of the clouds dissolved, and grew, at the same time. An unchoreographed ballet played out in the firmament. The clouds were free to express their nature unhindered, with no restraint or ideal to strive for. The self was lost gazing into the stormy energy parading past in the sky this night. So delicate the scene one dared to not disturb it with thoughts. Silent observation dissolves the self, the center from which one observes, and attentive energy permeates the mind. The brain is then capable of insight which is not the product of thought. Abandoning the false, immersing in the true. One sees that in stillness there is tremendous energy, shape and form change, yet movement is an illusion. When there is no anchor, no self-center, nothing solid to hold to, there is complete freedom. A lone small black bird, a chimney swift, flew across the sky and the rain-filled clouds, barley flapping its wings as it transited, and was gone. It left no mark, no trace or evidence it had been. It too expressed its freedom. The sacred, the religious if one wants to call it that, is here. Not tomorrow when we have grown to emulate an ideal, achieved respect, or accumulated merit. Those are techniques to delay and avoid. Entertainment and neurosis. The sacred is not an ideal or concept created and shaped by thought, nor an illusion, which the thought loves to create. The raindrops could be heard coming, racing in from the North, before the storm hit. A curious rolling, tippy tapping, low grumble, quickly growing louder. And then it hit, all was wet immediately, the whole earth was soaked, and the peculiar, unmistakable scent of fresh rain filled the now damp air. It also brought a darkness upon the scene. The massaging sound stilled the mind into even deeper silence. Unlikely as it is, sound brought a silence, a fragile, delicate awareness, which one could destroy easily with just one thought. The splashing, spattering raindrops were bringing stillness to the brain, suspending its preoccupation with achievement and desire, along with the ever-present suffering and dissatisfaction. No method, practice, or technique can duplicate it or create it. Those only create repetition, a habit, which is a template of the past, and can never reveal the new, only the old. When the self, a fragment, is nothing, the mind is capable to be whole and be aware of all the fragments, but the fragment can never see the whole. The whole contains all the unknown and is uncorrupted by ideas, opinions, and prejudice. Uncorrupted, there is no space between the observer and that which is observed. No desire to become. Now the clouds lost all shape and merged into a one featureless gray blue sky as the unseen sun slipped below the edge of the beautiful earth and rain filled the night.
Rainy night
Rainy night
Evening storms began rolling in a little before darkness fell upon the slumbering neighborhood. Intricate shaped clouds filled the multicolored evening sky, tinted blue, grey, orange and green, with continuously changing shapes and tonalities. Spats of lightning backlighted the nebulosities while distinct roars of thunder echoed through the distance, seemingly bouncing between the clouds. The clouds, some dark, some bright, each reached out in the surrounding space with delicate tendrils and swirling whisps of gaseous moisture. Each portion of the clouds dissolved, and grew, at the same time. An unchoreographed ballet played out in the firmament. The clouds were free to express their nature unhindered, with no restraint or ideal to strive for. The self was lost gazing into the stormy energy parading past in the sky this night. So delicate the scene one dared to not disturb it with thoughts. Silent observation dissolves the self, the center from which one observes, and attentive energy permeates the mind. The brain is then capable of insight which is not the product of thought. Abandoning the false, immersing in the true. One sees that in stillness there is tremendous energy, shape and form change, yet movement is an illusion. When there is no anchor, no self-center, nothing solid to hold to, there is complete freedom. A lone small black bird, a chimney swift, flew across the sky and the rain-filled clouds, barley flapping its wings as it transited, and was gone. It left no mark, no trace or evidence it had been. It too expressed its freedom. The sacred, the religious if one wants to call it that, is here. Not tomorrow when we have grown to emulate an ideal, achieved respect, or accumulated merit. Those are techniques to delay and avoid. Entertainment and neurosis. The sacred is not an ideal or concept created and shaped by thought, nor an illusion, which the thought loves to create. The raindrops could be heard coming, racing in from the North, before the storm hit. A curious rolling, tippy tapping, low grumble, quickly growing louder. And then it hit, all was wet immediately, the whole earth was soaked, and the peculiar, unmistakable scent of fresh rain filled the now damp air. It also brought a darkness upon the scene. The massaging sound stilled the mind into even deeper silence. Unlikely as it is, sound brought a silence, a fragile, delicate awareness, which one could destroy easily with just one thought. The splashing, spattering raindrops were bringing stillness to the brain, suspending its preoccupation with achievement and desire, along with the ever-present suffering and dissatisfaction. No method, practice, or technique can duplicate it or create it. Those only create repetition, a habit, which is a template of the past, and can never reveal the new, only the old. When the self, a fragment, is nothing, the mind is capable to be whole and be aware of all the fragments, but the fragment can never see the whole. The whole contains all the unknown and is uncorrupted by ideas, opinions, and prejudice. Uncorrupted, there is no space between the observer and that which is observed. No desire to become. Now the clouds lost all shape and merged into a one featureless gray blue sky as the unseen sun slipped below the edge of the beautiful earth and rain filled the night.