The greatest wisdom is letting be.  Letting be is a movement of availability, of acceptance—and ultimately of love.  How can we achieve such an extraordinary capacity—to love consciously?   I suspect it is not what we think.  It is not straining beyond ourselves—it is just the opposite.  It is going down, practicing love and acceptance on animals—including the animal of the body.  The wise Buddhist teacher Ajahn Chah urged people to be humble—to be like earth worms, digging down into the earth of themselves.  When I sit sometimes, I reflect that this body I have been given links me to the distant past.  I marvel that this body came to me from a great chain of humanity—reaching back to our common mothers.  In meditation, this body is revealed to be a vast cave of wonders, like Lascaux. Who knows what wonders might be discovered if I can shine the light of attention? I have heard and read that we contain worlds, universes.  I might glimpse this and hear this. If I can let it be.

— http://tracycochran.org/2012/05/let-it-be/

The next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha will take the form of a community; a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living. This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the Earth.

—Thich Nhat Hanh

Every part of your world is divided, fragmented, filled with opposition against itself. Every fragment strives with another for something they cannot reach– harmony. Yet, if your race learns to reach beyond these divisions, these opposites, you will find that there is a pattern of wholeness that is indivisible and allows no fragmentation. You know this yourselves though you seldom own it. There is a deep reservoir of oneness beyond the divisive way you live. Seek that and you will discover the deep harmony that exists in all creation.

— John Matthews, The Sidhe: Wisdom from the Celtic Otherworld, 95,96

Pay attention to everything around you: to the flight of birds, the movement of clouds, and the dance of leaves in the air. Listen to the song of the wind, the murmur of the river, the sounds made by insects in the grass, bees on the wing, the chatter of crows and the barking of dogs. Wherever you are and wherever you go, listen and look– and remember. For in these things lies the pattern of all creation, of which you are a part. When you can hear the sound of a butterfly opening its wings, then you can hear the sounds of your own immortal being.

–John Matthews, The Sidhe: Wisdom from the Other World, 105

This is our second morning at Edisto Island, SC. As I did my dawn nature meditation my attention went to a gap between the trees that afforded a “peephole” to the distant marshes. Suddenly I was transported beyond the limiting confines of what immediately surrounded me– the trees and hanging Spanish moss– to the sense of almost infinite expansion. Then, as I became aware of the details of a distant building which appeared in the same peephole, in front of the marshes, with the dawn light painting golden, expanding patterns on it, I realized that I can be aware of details and be at the same time in an expanded state. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Then I listened to the diverse and engaging calls of birds, noticing that the sounds of the birds were different than during yesterday’s dawn. I listened to the particular sounds but not losing the sense of expansion. I was aware of the space which embraced the particular sounds. In both sight and hearing I was able to perceive the particular and the expanded.

I remembered that Anda talks about this when she describes her artistic process.

I am discovering that it is indeed possible to have what is called shiva drishti, open-eyed meditation. That I can be Self-aware even as I behold the world around me. This is what is meant by the term “entering the void with the eyes open.” We are able to behold the world from our own divine center. We can come to behold the world as not different than God.

To perceive heaven on earth is unity awareness– it comes from an inner realization independent of a particular location. Places like Edisto Island, however, seem to roll out a red carpet for this awareness to dawn.

During 1978-79 Brian and I attended the fourth course at Claymont Court (http://www.claymontseminars.com/). It was one of a series of nine month courses at Claymont which had been initiated by John G. Bennett, who anchored it in the “Fourth Way” teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff. Our teacher was Pierre Elliot, and one of the first weekly themes he assigned to us was “noticing.” We spent a week contemplating that word as we went about our daily work, which was also underpinned by various inner exercises designed to help us to be fully present in the moment.

For some reason, this is one of the themes that stuck with me all of these years. Now I am mining it further. It seems to be the golden key for me right now, as I improve in my ability to sacrifice mental reverie for noticing the details around me, from the space of the Heart.

I also find that when I am focusing on noticing, I see things that need to be done that I otherwise may have missed. It increases my opportunity to be helpful.

And if we are praying with the body as well as the heart and mind, then we can also pray to the pine tree, the moon, and the stars. The pine tree is quite solid, the moon is always there on time, and the stars are always there for us, free and bright. If we can be deeply in touch with the pine tree, we are able to be in touch  with the one mind, with God. If touching means that God is able to transmit energy to us, then the pine tree can also transmit energy to us…

… so being in touch the almond tree (St. Francis story) is a way of being in touch with God. You will not find God in an abstract idea. This is something very important. God is here for us through very concrete things.

— Thich Nhat Hanh, The Energy of Prayer, p.70

This morning I was rummaging for a notebook when I happened upon an article previously mentioned in this blog. In the New York Times Magazine, March 18, 2012, Kim Tingley wrote in “The Whisper of the Wild” about a sound recording project in Denali National Park and Preserve. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/magazine/is-silence-going-extinct.html?pagewanted=all)

This location, especially in winter,  is a vast and silent world. When there are no planes overhead, only the sounds of nature are heard– if only the sound of one’s own breath and heartbeat. Coming back from an expedition to install a recording station, and collect recording results, he described an experience he had at the recording site:

Night fell as we retraced our steps along the trail. The sky turned from lavender to indigo while the snow on the ground and the mountains glowed even when the last of the sun was gone. We headed for Jupiter, hanging low above the trees, and as we walked, I pictured the station back on the ridge, wrapped in the same darkness. When Betchkal harvests the audio, he will find us repacking our packs, exclaiming over our frozen apparatuses and sliding down the hillside into the willow field below. He will also, for three minutes, witness us still our movements and attune our ears to one of the quietest places left on Earth. In that window, I could hear the vastness of the valley — no sound marks materialized, like buoys bobbing on an empty ocean, to segment the sense of infinity. The landscape enveloped me, as Betchkal said it would, and I felt I was the landscape, where mountains and glaciers rose and shifted eons before the first heartbeats came to life.

“Standing in that place right there,” Betchkal told me later, “I had a complete sense that I was standing in that place right there and not drawn or distracted from it at all.”

There is a place close to the Blue Heron mining community ( http://www.nps.gov/biso/historyculture/blueheron.htm) in Kentucky, a short hike to the edge of a vast gorge. I love to go to this spot and absorb the silence. It feels like a healing balm. In this spot it is easy to become one with the landscape. It is as if the very silence sucks all of the thoughts from the mind.

However, Nature is everywhere. A weed pushes its way through a crack in a city sidewalk. It is easier to become one with the landscape in a wild place. Knowing that and craving that– I wish to become one with the landscape wherever I am.