Photo courtesy of: ‘I Am The Sky’ by artjoao – Pixabay
https://tinyurl.com/y8ua4k4l
THAT TOO IS ‘I’
Instead of narrowly grasping at things we want, we simply ‘open’ to everything, all that we fear and hold back is simply overwhelmed by everything we allow in… EVERYTHING, and it far outweighs all imagined boundaries, boxes, enclosures, confines, coops, and folds…
“[Try] to notice—in all your thoughts, sensations, and direct encounters—the objects and ‘outside-standers’ that make appearance meaningful. FOR EACH OBJECT ENCOUNTERED OR REFERRED TO, note it and EMBRACE IT IN ITS IMMEDIATE GIVENNESS AS BEING PART OF ‘YOU’. You can do this both by saying to yourself, “That too is ‘I’,†and by extending your sense of located awareness to embrace the apparently separate and distant object.
This exercise [on INTIMACY,] helps to counteract the tendency to polarize experience, which creates a self that is cut off from the rest of reality… if practiced carefully, it will undermine the idea of a solid and continuous ‘self’.
…’Time, Space, and Knowledge,’ by Tarthang Tulku, p. 189
For me, Ken’s poem embraces this practice…
USER FRIENDLY
by Ken McKeon
This is the friendly story,
The open door, hand shake,
Hot meal, cup of coffee story,
Done.
And I think to ask about the sky above,
I am that satisfied,
The day is that rare,
Why is there such a high and open loop of blue above?
Why is it edged by space and stars,
By looms of spreading towers of rainbow light?
And a voice replied,
I am the sky,
I am the clouds, the rain, the flowers,
I am every bagel, every morning, every smear of cream cheese,
I am all the lox that’s been ever known.
And I said, that’s really cool,
Then I went on about my day.
