Mind Grasping
Ten Million Little Fingers
Ten million little
fingers sunk
deeply into flesh:
the mind grasping
The hundred-headed hungry hydra.
And no Hercules around.
This is my quandary: If my true nature is emptiness: pure awareness, pure matter-less and energy-less stillness, with no tendrils or anchors or chains or nets or anything material at all to bind or hold me — how come I am still in my head? How come I don’t just float out and away? Singing.
How come I still look out of these eyes? Breathe through this nose? Hear through these ears?
This is a partial answer: I must be doing many things that I am not aware of doing (below the awareness-surface as it were): such as sinking ten million little mind-fingers into flesh to anchor me here by claiming such dubious (and false) ownership.
This is another partial answer: I now realize that “unifying the mind” in samadhi is not only about concentration and focused awareness, it is at least as much about making ten million little mind-fingers cease their fleshly, below-the-surface grasping and join the rest of awareness on my softly breathing in and breathing out.
I have read so many books now on meditation and samadhi and zazen and nowhere is this particular point made: that it is as important to make the mind “stop doing” (so many other things) as it is to make it focus on air and air out. Perhaps this point is obvious to one and all, but it is just now, after all these years, growing obvious to me: a unified mind is doing only one thing: it is ONLY aware of air in and air out (say), it is not doing anything, not a single thing, else, at all.
At all.
And so, I float out of my head, singing.
© Wolfstuff
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