A cannon blast through the heart of all that is dead and decaying.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Strike Another Match

And so, life starts anew. The Spring finally thaws the permafrost of my soul and the wonder that is existence fills me with its vibrancy once more. Finally, the new year takes hold.

And time to pull up stakes. My wife and I soon to move to a country cottage, which has necessitated a much needed thinning of possessions. Time to get down to the basics (or as close as I can come to them)--a few Buddhist books, some volumes of poetry (East and West), my Henry Miller collection ("always merry and bright!"), some good old Grateful Dead, my old zafu, and of course, Henry David Thoreau. He has been there always, shinning like a morning star on the horizon of a newly born day. If I owe anything to Clinton High School, it is for introducing me to Thoreau and Emerson. They began the puzzle that the Buddha-Dharma completed.

What a disconnect I felt sitting in church as a child between that place of worship and God's living creation outside! Instead of showing reverence for the miracle that is the living world, we raised a brick-and-mortar creation by our own hands and had the audacity to call it "God's house," when we were really separating ourselves from the true abode of the Holy; cutting ourselves off from the spring of life so we could more clearly hear the belchings of the pipe organ.

And I still remember that day in Catholic catechism when we were asked to go outside and go to that place where we could more clearly contemplate God. While others confusedly meandered around the parking lot, I instinctively made a bee-line to the woods--that place of worship I had always returned to since the time I could walk.

Then I was confronted by the dilemma of existence, the dilemma of self. The Buddha-Dharma appeared to me "of itself." Almost by accident, I glimpsed the Ultimate Reality, entering that place where "I" no longer had any meaning. For a moment, I was released from the burden of the self, as if waking from a long dream and seeing the world as it is for the first time. All contradictions fell away; all the horrible questions brought on by ego dissipated before me. I saw, ever so briefly, the One from which there is no separation but is all things as all things are one--the Buddha-Nature, the Tao!

The Transcendentalists were very much signposts on this road of awakening that I am still very much traveling on (still glimpsing, waiting for the pin hole of light to open up and forever envelop the delusion that is that traveler walking the road of awakening). When I read The Over-Soul in High School, I knew exactly what Emerson was writing of--it was that which I had felt my entire life growing up, daily disappearing into the woods to unconsciously pay homage to the living force I felt run like a current through all things, that current that all mystics and holy men feel course through themselves--that current that runs through us all, whether we are able to acknowledge it or not.

And so, in less than two weeks time, I will return to the country. And hopefully return to that place where I might once again more fully feel the pulse that runs through us all. Rest assured, Thoreau will be there with me, loafing away the days beneath the bright summer sun, surrounded by ten-thousand things that are the faces of the One.

1 Comments:

Blogger Tim Hennessy said...

Hey Hippie--

You're mentioned in this piece about Centennial Press:
http://www.bookslut.com/blog/archives/2008_06.php#012959

4:46 PM

 

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