We reveled in the joy of lying on our backs watching raindrops fall toward us , somehow in the thrumming prime of the night even through the synthetic fibers of the tent we could see them. The forest touched us with a thick root winding beneath our backs and sleeping bags. Out of sight, branches bowed in the gusts of the storm. Ink black space breathed expansive, lunar- blue tendrils of light unfurled, we lunged into liquid stillness between schools of thought.
Trickling south on the Oregon coastal route 101 , outside the monastery and its percussioned intervals was an electric freedom: neither bell nor clappers sang our ears, instead highway hymns of engine and asphalt, the quirky charms of small town café’s, silky silence of undulating dune, a seagulls’ soaring cry. It is curious how closely the body listens and responds to the world – as if every thing or thought were incantation: perhaps most powerful the shadowy whisperings of the subconscious, most powerful because chanted in the dark. Heart and environment are one, body and environment are one – this ancient teaching vivid, having stepped outside an accustomed inter-creating nexus of community. Extended and exclusive companionship with my beloved softened too-familiar muscular tension, vitality traversed from head to toe without traffic, bones and flesh more relaxed then i can remember of late.
It seems enough immersion in a place of the Way and the practice seeps into sinew, at times every cell numinous with curiosity, for no reason, alive without a path. Unmoored from habit, compulsion or obligation. More natural then vow, commitment or oath. Of course the mind travels and forsakes the place we stand, yet this is noticed. How?, by whom?, by what? – here is a wonder of Presence, too large to be understood. Closing the eyes, nonetheless filled with vision. Covering the ears, still we vibrate with sound.
Playing in this inescapable intimacy, we asked with an organic attending, Now, what texture the heart?, Now, what shape awareness? : A chanced upon beach trail gave a quintet of rock islands adorned with wild grasses and impossibly rooted, wind sculpted Cypress. These slow motion ships of stone drifted nowhere, conspiring with skies punctured by bindis of light, tides casting wide ribbons of foam after foam upon the generous sands.
How interesting that even in the most idyllic landscapes, the shadows of human consciousness cast. I watched words of baseless anxiety carried by the waves of the sea, observed poems of delight spill into greed. I remembered that ripened compassion is sometimes called oceanic: enveloping all that enters, vast and undiscriminating, moistening what is dry, in time washing away all man- made debris.
The sun began to set. We tiptoed over mollusks, three foot sea cucumbers, over countless, nameless beings, alien, salty, and soft. Beneath a tree we set up the mosquito net tent. Constellations snuck through the leaf canopy. Listening to insects, our minds settled with ease.
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