Wonder and Awe

From the infinitely vast cosmos to the emptiness in the atom and the subatomic dance, from dimensions unknown to the stretching of time, I find awe. Our survival demands evolution, which demands transformation, which demands spiritual practice. The principle of practice is simple, we take regular steps, and we take care of every moment and every being as best we can.

For this to happen, we need to stay inspired, so that what is highest in you is in contact with what is highest in the universe. What for you causes that resonance, that shimmering and sparkling in the heights of your being? What is it that connects you to awe and wonder? How do you stay connected and stay inspired, how do you keep it alive in your practice?

There is wonder on the path, wonder within, as meditation unveils vistas unrealised, visions hazily formed or bright and boundless. There are moments of limitless loving kindness, of bursting compassion and blissful tears of gratitude. One day we can be moved to massive upsurgings of energy and bliss, the next we can be struggling with our demons, but we are still inspired to cut off the roots of poison, striving to transcend greed, hatred, and ignorance.

We have to be. For the sake of life on Earth.

We need to have hope, faith in our potential. It is the fundamental expression of love.

So simple yet so challenging. If I meditate often, give often, and cease doing harm of any kind, happiness arises. Yet there are contrary forces in me, distractions and desires, so that without regular contact with my vision, without inspiration, this would be nearly impossible. Fortunately, there is vision and beauty everywhere, we have all that we need, if we simply remember to look.

It is all on the path, all for the taking, the bliss and the sunshine within. Simply meditate, again and again, simply take one step after another, for each moment of meditation, each inspiration, each vision, each prayer, each generous thought, each kind word, and every moment of love and compassion and every selfless act is a step on the path, and an unveiling of your innate purity.

It is so easy to forget such moments, but they are the building blocks of a peaceful world, a world no longer ravaged by greed or hatred. It is a step into our birthright, our awakening from destroyer to guardian of this beautiful world and all its beings.

Wisdom is there for the experiencing, tuning into the effervescent and infinite stream of interpenetrating conditioned arisings, from beginninglessness to the deathless, we open our eyes to the deep and wide stream of stars that is wisdom. It is simply the removal of concepts like self and other, the dissolving of duality.

There is wondrous beauty wherever you look, if you but had the eyes to see. Even if all you can see is limited, there are oceans within, skies bright and clear, adventures, quests, a world to awaken. To the extent that the mind is pure, a buddhafield can be seen, a deity can be seen, a buddha land can be built. Buddha fields are intensely beautiful, made of peace and bliss and wonder.

Experiences are preceded by mind, led by mind, produced by mind. With our minds we see, with our minds we make a world, with our minds we live life. Why then, would you not purify that mind? Brighten that mind, that heart, and you brighten that world, you brighten that life,

Remember your most beautiful and wistful dream, remember your highest bliss, and this comes close to the fruits of the path. Again and again I wish I could lend an experience to you, to show you what is here for us on the path. If I could but give you a moment, you would never look for it in a bottle, or any object, you would never crave anything else ever again.

Practice leads to these states, but according to the maps these states are but mere glimpses of the ultimate liberation, full and perfect enlightenment. It tends to be the glimpses of perfection which inspire us, which give us faith that this does work, that we can do it, that the path is leading somewhere beautiful.

Nature is our perfect teacher, again and again she shows the way, floating on the water and drifting with the cloud. She whispers to the walker of the way in the crashing of a wave, in the sparkling of a dewdrop, or moving through us like heather in the breeze or dancing with us as sunshine on a stream.

Seek beauty and you shall see it.

Life is an ever unfolding, ever deepening mystery, and can there really be any other response than awe?

If you were to take a teaspoon of sand, there would be many grains of sand, what of a beach, what of the oceans, and what of the truth that in infinite space there are more worlds than there are grains of sand on our world?

We are floating in boundless space, spiralling and pirouetting with our sun and our moon, so how important are our worries and dreams, when in reality our existence is quick and bright as stars at dawn, as bubbles on a stream, as flashes of lightning in a timeless sky?

This world of form is like a mass of foam, full of cracks and holes, and hidden emptiness which deceives our minds, and in it we crave and we want and we wish and we hope. We love and we lose, we cry and we gaze, suddenly struck dumb as we turn a corner and before us is heavenly gold and cloud and sinking sun.

We wish to catch it and have it, frantically taking pictures which will never do it justice. We wish to remember this beauty and this moment, when just for a moment we awaken from the matrix of structure and concept and important conceit. We want to remember that moment in which our fears were shattered, a record of that moment in which our self was transcended. This is all I want to say, that those moments can become experience, that we can find what we were always seeking.

I wonder why, when I am in nature’s embrace, she seems to dance with me, playfully teaching me about all that I wonder. In the wink of a droplet, sunlight flickers and dazzles me with colours and ideas that may well have forever gone unseen. Remember the mystery, the life of life, the way of the ancients who would see the gods in everyday life, in the dance of light on a path, hear them in the cry of a bird.

When I stay for a while in the forest, surrounded by beauty and dappled majesty, green light and birdsong, it is as if vision awakens, dreams become brighter and more lucid. Away from all of the unseen wifi and radio waves, away from the noise and the electricity, connection deepens and unravels. Peace abounds. The mystery opens.

How can I not feel awe, when it seems as if every little coincidence and accident, every condition and cause, from a beginningless beginning, is culminating, is pushing up a fountain upon which I tumble with my mind, evolving I hope, dreaming I hope, inspired and in wonderment at the sheer beauty of it all, I hope. There is awe in the analysis and the appreciation of all phenomena.

Is it not all right here and now culminating in this moment of yours? Every thought and wish, of you and your ancestors, the numberless ideas of others, unimagined accidents of chemistry and opportunistic protozoa? Every birth of every sun, every beam and every smile, every chance and synchronicity, every new life, every change and death, every intersecting ray of light, every call and resonance, every vibration and beingness?

All here now, as if emanating and reconnecting with the field of light within and beyond all forms, with the silence within sound. All appearances are my texts, and all disappearances my teachings. Comings and goings are simply such, never separate from the field of primordial clear and bright awareness.

If all this is behind us, as it were, and leads to wonder, what of all that is to come? What change when this body is but memory, when this earth is mere dust drifting through other galaxies, when this consciousness a dream in another dimension? What was before this universe and what will follow, and is there a point, a reason for it all? Some will say God and some say not, either way there is no full stop. No explanation will satisfy my awe, and for this I am so very grateful.

I am so grateful there is no fabricated explanation, no sophisticated reasoning binding and blinding, no structures woven around mind to prevent it from expanding, stretching and wondering. What of the stillness within movement, the silence within sound, the infinite in the snowflake, what of all that lies beyond space and time?

I say it is vital to discover your sources of wonder, your inspirations, your delights. Learn them and guard them, for they are your precious jewels. What is it that opens you out, that cuts through your cocoon of concepts and your comfort blanket of beliefs and views? What smashes you open? What helps you fall gently open? What takes you beyond mind and body, beyond name and form, beyond the rational?

We have seen that space is endless and inconceivable. It holds all the other elements, even perhaps consciousness which is as endless and inconceivable as space. Imagine how beautiful, how powerful, how awe-inspiring that consciousness is when it is suffused with blazing loving kindness. Such a world it could create.

This is what is there in loving kindness meditation, a brightness and love in your heights and depths, and there is nowhere it cannot go, your love can completely saturate the totality of space and time, and that which is beyond.

For me it is beauty, in all the forms one can encounter it. It is in meditation, and the brightly boundless realms within. It is inspiration, it is space, time, as well as that which is not in space and time. It is verses penned by ancient sages, the hesitant opening of awareness, the higher consciousness which is unfolding in our world now.

It is the hope and the faith that the wise and kind potential in human nature would blossom beyond its searching, acquisitive greed, and its deluded view of life. That we can transcend pollution and hate, into beings capable of peace and guardianship. It is the ideal of the bodhisattva, a being who will work for the benefit of all beings, a soul dedicated to relieving all suffering. This ideal smashes me open, it bursts my heart and sings such a song of longing and hope. The greatest of heroes comes alive in our hearts if we even contemplate such an ideal, shows us how to live, how to love, how to truly belong and weave sunshine into the fabric of the world.

The highest ideal we are capable of is coming alive in the world now, that beings change from living for the self to living for all, living and serving so that all life may benefit, may evolve. With this evolution comes beauties previously undreamt, fulfilments unknown, a love so powerful we could only call it divine. It is the light, the potential, in me, in you, in all. The limitless potential, the boundless compassion and limitless love that we are. You?