Saturday, March 7, 2009

Essay: Slow the Boat

The only reality is this living reality. Thoughts, feelings, and sensations appear and vanish within it, and is the stuff from which they are made. Another name for this reality is presence, which is your ordinary, everyday awareness seen in all of its depth and timelessness.

A full-seeing is all that's needed. It's akin to kayaking or canoeing on a tranquil bay. You slow the boat. It stops and sloshes, as you gaze into the turquoise waters. At first, you only perceive the bright fragments of things, which seem just within reach. There are medleys of exotic fish amid variegated coral and sponges.



Relaxing your vision, you see that because of the light's refraction through the water, the bay is not at all shallow, but deep. Now you can make out long, undulating sea shadows, as well as canopies of kelp and sea grasses along the sandy bottom. Even from the surface, you can observe that there is a deep and profound sereneness down there, a calm that defies description.

This is how it is with your everyday awareness. You (seemingly) skirt its nature by not bringing your attention to its richness and subtlety. This is unfortunate, to say the least! Recognizing your nonconceptual nature is far easier than plumbing the depths of a bay. For there are no tricks of light or blurs of reef tropicals--just a pristine clarity without diminishment or measure.

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