Reading is re-minding. Bringing us back to our secret selves.
A word, an image, a story, an idea. And we are “there” again.
I’ve never preached the gospel according to Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, or anyone else, though I read into them all, still.
I am reminded this moment of an old Zen saying that has been with me since my first days before a class: “When the student is ready, the teacher arrives.”
That is a moment of transcendence. For writers and artists especially.
This is just another note on Basho’s way to haiku-mind.
Something I read last night reminded me.
The word glowing in the center of it all is “meditation.” Yes, we’ve all been there before. We’ve made mush of the concept, ‘marketing’ it to death. Yet—it comes to all of us without knowing, whether we beckon it or not.
If the poet, writer is to pay attention to the world, give the meaning it deserves, he must quietly pursue this pathway—or never meet the teacher waiting for him there. – norbert blei
And if you find that meditation does not come easily in your city room, be inventive and go out into nature. Nature is always an unfailing fountain of inspiration. To calm your mind, go for a walk at dawn in the park, or watch the dew on a rose in a garden. Lie on the ground and gaze up into the sky, and let your mind expand into its spaciousness. Let the sky outside awake a sky inside your mind. Stand by a stream and mingle your mind with its rushing; become one with its ceaseless sound. Sit by a waterfall and let its healing laughter purify your spirit. Walk on a beach and take the sea wind full and sweet against your face. Celebrate and use the beauty of moonlight to poise your mind. Sit by a lake or in a garden and, breathing quietly, let your mind fall silent as the moon comes up majestically and slowly in the cloudless night.
Everything can be used as an invitation to meditation. A smile, a face in the subway, the sight of a small flower grow¬ing in the crack of a cement pavement, a fall of rich cloth in a shop window, the way the sun lights up flower pots on a window sill. Be alert for any sign of beauty or grace. Offer up every joy, be awake at all moments, to “the news that is always arriving out of silence.”
Slowly you will become a master of your own bliss, a chemist of your own joy, with all sorts of remedies always at hand to elevate, cheer, illuminate, and inspire your every breath and movement. What is a great spiritual practitioner? A person who lives always in the presence of his or her own true self, someone who has found and who uses continually the springs and sources of profound inspiration. …
To embody the transcendent is why we are here.from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche, Harper Collins, 1994
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