Photo courtesy of: ‘View from the Porch 1-4-18’ by David Filippone
Sitting on the porch after breakfast watching as the edge of the ‘bomb cyclone’ passes. Wind-chill is 7 degrees, with up to 40 mph wind gusts… will be much colder tonight. Saw the red fox trolling the frozen field for moles and field mice, and a couple of young squirrels jumping the branches of the barren maples.. It’s harsh out there, and I am grateful to be cozy sipping hot coffee by the fire… I am aware of the juxtapositions of inner and outer, from an outside weather perspective, next to somatic patterns within… Struck by the similarities of weather and mood, ever changing feeling-tones.
Light and dark play around inside me like the jumping squirrels… I think of the light exercises I’ve done. Rinpoche says:
“…look within your thoughts and sensations for the quality of darkness. Become familiar with darkness; be ready to let yourself sink into it without losing awareness completely…â€
‘Dynamics of Time and Space’, p. 327
I have done that… “losing awareness completelyâ€â€¦ went too far, not asleep, just totally unaware — blank. But not this moment. I am aware of what arises within is luminous, thoughts and images made of an internal light… they appear and then pass into the dark. Rinpoche askes, “Where does this light come from?†A light of awareness? Mental things seem to puff into forms and then recede into the dark, even contexts seem to dawn and then set… fading out. Rinpoche continues:
“We see that established dimensionality simply ‘pops up’ together with each arising thought. In such a flattened realm, where each point is ‘pointless’, thoughts no longer exert a gravitational pull capable of shaping appearance into substance.
When we abide in unestablished thought, we enter a space from which knowledge has not been foreclosed. No longer inhabiting conventional space, we have no where to go and no path to follow. Without departing from the known, we are free to be any way at all. We discover an inner ease that nourishes us and awakens unexpected capacities…
“Zeroless thinking offers the prospect of freedom and beauty. Instead of thrusting toward the substantial, thoughts could reveal a zeroless world: appearance without substance and presence without source. Naturally joined to awareness and insight, they could evoke the remarkable power of appearance to assume virtually any form.†p.58
“The interplay of identities in the foreground of experience obscures the light transmission. But beyond identity and what we can identify, there is a way to experience light more directly. The ‘lightness’ of sensing can open to the nature of light. ‘Particles’ of lightness can reveal the resources intrinsic to embodiment.†p.204
