May 30, 2012

Clouded over, a morning of little sun, still warm enough for cicadas, and birds out there doing what birds do, flying, searching, singing.  A pair of little white butterflies drift through the yard, never stopping.  The light changes moment by moment, somewhere a woodpecker is hammering out his morning's work, hollow sounding and rhythm rough.  No breeze moves the leaves, all the wind is aloft moving clouds around to intervene between us and the sun.  Darker green is made darker by so many shadows, even the last white of the new cane is dark for the moment.

This morning I recognize the truth in this poem . . .

The Meaning of Existence

Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence.
Trees, planets, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it
moment by moment as the universe.

Even this fool of a body
lives it in part, and would
have full dignity within it
but for the ignorant freedom
of my talking mind.

Les Murray 

I remember trying to learn meditation, the emptying of the mind so that for a short space of time, you could just be, just exist without judgment, without thought, with the mind quiet and the body at ease.  Well, good luck with that, I never had much luck with it <chuckle>  I finally found a meditation I could actually use, the thousand petal lotus:  you start with a word, and it leads to another word, and so on round and round just thinking of each word until another one presents itself.  I can do that, the words come so slowly and smoothly that they are like tiny pebbles in a large pond making barely visible ripples.  My talking mind settles and seems less anxious, less unsure, it stops wanting to chatter and slowly begins to listen then just relaxes into the words, and stops looking back or ahead, just rests in the now of each word.  Everything in nature lives in the now, knows nothing but the moment, but I am not sure that the meaning of existence would be a concept to nature.  Why would nature need it?  Our minds, looking forward and back, our minds need language to make sense of that looking, to search for meaning in what we have experienced and what we will experience, we understand the instant of now because we are living it, so full of the moment we can only recognize the experience with reference to the past or that future, and that's what language does for us, lets us hold on to the now, to connect it to time gone before, and what we will experience.  I think I will keep my talking mind, it has its own dignity, a dignity I can understand, keeping me connected to the living world, and appreciating the experience.

The sun is out again, but I'm sure it will not stay long, clouds are still restless and shifting.  Shadows will deepen and bring moments of coolness.  See, my talking mind is anticipating, accepting, moving on through the day, with its ignorant freedom, making memories, and ten thousand connections.