because directly i could not, speaking obliquely of these times of ...that's how hölderlin called it over two hundred years ago: times of need, times of distress and askes: und wozu dichter in dürtfiger zeit? / why poets in times of need?
" in this world / we walk on the roof of hell / gazing at flowers. " - kobayashi issa
the beauty of osho's words arrested me this morning: “ our existence is nothing but a sound in the immense ocean of silence.”
as i sat with these words, ripples started surfacing then began floating in my direction:
ripples made of words, echoes of words, they swam towards me. my words, others' words, my own forgotten spoken in foreign tongue words, words of exile and impossible motherlands, words as words of another and another's words lifted by me as most intimate. all words, words of self and other, all borrowed for in silence no one is the owner of language.
that's how silence speaks, it speaks when no one speaks. it is speaking now but this is the speaking of: no one is speaking, do you hear, no one is speaking.
dispossed of everything, unselfed, forgotten, that is how silence comes upon us and invites us to speak. invites us to speak from the depths of listening. it has been revealed, i have heard, that the universe is made of the vibrations of listening.
in the hollowness of the self, of the heart, of the soul, silence is the presence of wholeness. a murmuring. best heard in darkness for in absence too wholeness thrives.
"whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." ludwig wittgenstein.
it is vast, it's unbound, it is the sky, it is the ocean, it's a bird song fusing from behind the line of trees.
we emerge from that ocean and return to that ocean. you can call that ocean the tao, the primal source, the universe, or any other name of your liking. any name will do as no name will do. no name will do as it is beyond name and naming.
beyond, meaning, it is what allows us to name whilst being itself nameless.
from the depth of the unutterable, namelessnesss, naming and names appear.
" in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god." - john 1
that which has no name but carries everything and everyone's self.
the tao that can be named is not the eternal tao. ( tao te ching)
it is coming out of silence and returning back to silence.
that which emerges from silence (call it shunyata) and returns to silence we call sound (call it form.)
if we find peace in the appearing and disappearing of that sound which is our particular existence, our drop of water out of that endless ocean of life and death, we then intimately feel the ocean is always here and that the always here of the ocean as what is innermost and inseparable from us.
beyond that, to forget what it means that the ocean has always been there, the ocean shall always be there. just to be at peace with this: the ocean is there, or not even the ocean is there, just, the ocean is, for ultimately there is no here or there. and what is the ocean but a tentative and restless way of speaking of there is no here and there.
awakening to: the ocean is, is realizing silence as our true home. in silence we abide. why do we leave our refuge, why do we err in the desert? here we face a mystery. if nothing else, your nature is a longing. this mystery is demanding of your expression; so speak, speak, but speak softly!
then we worry less about the sounds we make, others make, we won’t worry if the sounds we make are being heard or fade unheeded into nothingness.
" wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich auf denn aus der engel ordnung / who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?" asks rilke in the opening of his elegies.
we just make the sounds or songs we are here to create as we return to the silence that is home. no one is called, there is just this calling. there is harmony. we just sing the song we are here to sing and go in obedience, humility and grace. and that is the end of the story, if story there ever were. and from here we begin again. or do we?
as we settle at home in the nature of: the ocean is, silence is my home, we cease all concerns about what will become of our individual sound; will it completely vanish one day, will it keep reverberating through the infinity of space and time, will it return like a distant echo, will it ripple in the heart of others, will it turn into a song and blossom into flowers of rememberance? our root fear is: will something in me survive nothingness? why fear since nothingness will surely survive nothingness. we can assume, we don't know. this should be enough reassurance for us. do we need more?
does your spirit need to be spoonfed with eterntiy to realize that tracelessness is all that we have and having that we are freed from chasing after traces? tracelessness is our true abode for only eternity quentches the thirst that is the longing for eternity. in zen engaging with the everyday, with the ordinary, is how we meet eternity.
" dropping off body and mind is good practice. make a vigorous effort to pierce your nostrils. karmic consciousness is endless, with nothing fundamental to rely on, including not others, not self, not sentient beings, and not causes and conditions. although this is so, eating breakfast comes first." - dogen's extensive record no. 306
who is at home in waters is not afraid of drowning in the sea. let the concerns of waves repose in the stillness of the ocean bed whence they return to.
happy to be this sound, happy to be this drop of morning rain dripping on a palm frond, happy to be this bird cry meandering through green open fields, this note of vesper music suspended in midair the time that the wind passes between two hills and enters through your window..
here our nature is found, all we need is to listen, listen to silence, listen to silence that is the voice of god.
all things are god when they are nothings. these words echo a saying of meister eckhart.
we settle in the peace of
the ocean is
we are
and the rest is silence
where rest finds us
bereft of all the rest
Comments