A Touch of Now - An Introduction

“I sit here desperately wanting to create something; to say something on these pages that will convey my thoughts, the beauty of this spot; to share my experience of this moment in time. My chest aches and tightens, as if to squeeze out the salty tears of longing. I look up from my shaded table cracked and weathered like the hull of an ancient ship, my back warmed in the afternoon sun, and thought is inadequate to the task.
Emerald green waves, speckled white with tips of foam, roll toward me from a forest curling like a finger out into the sea. Puffy white clouds emerge from beyond this jagged green horizon and float in lazy patterns against a pale blue sky. Leaves flutter in the warm breeze and dancing shadows dabble all around my wordless perch as seagulls, screeching nature’s plan, dive for unseen morsels and a jittery squirrel buries his face in the still moist grass.
The scene is there for everyone present. My experience lost within me and an inability to truly share the wonder may be my greatest pain.”

When exactly I wrote this is uncertain. Why, is an even greater mystery? What I am certain of however, is the truth embraced by the experience. It describes a moment in which I felt the touch of “now,” and in that touch the truth was unmistakable, simple, clear, and thoroughly unspeakable. I was present to that moment and the moment shared with me all there is to know. This Blog is about my journey, then and now, into the moment and the truth I find there.


March 13, 2011

A Response to E's Comment

Your question:
          I want to include a more visceral, experiential approach. In the latter paragraphs, you move a lot into desire, grasping, wanting. And while that may be a cause of "self," I want to put more emphasis on "Who am I?" when the grasping falls away! Am I Buddha nature? Am I pure consciousness? Am I emptiness? Am I nothingness? Am I One?

My answer:
         Since you have brought up the ideas of Buddha nature, Pure Consciousness, Emptiness, Nothingness, and Oneness, I will defer to my blog on these issues specifically. As to this particular question I offer the following opinion.
         In the previous post, I made the following statement: this thing I think of as "me" will simply be one with whatever is at the moment. Therefore, regardless of what one names it, the "I" which has shed grasping and aversion will remain as the on-going flow of experience for each individual. Personally I believe that is an adequate understanding of Buddha-dharma, and the other terms.
         Buddha means "awakened one." Awakened to what? Well, awakened to what his teachings point to.....the result of following his path. Call it enlightenment, transcendence, release, or Oneness, etc. I think it is synonymous with the emptiness that is, in each moment, filled with the process of unending contingent-arising which would be understood as nothingness if it were to be apprehended by human thought. It is the vast primordial unfolding of consciousness as well.
        What we have to remember is that all these terms are just metaphoric fingers that point to an unknowable moon. When we try to use words, which by their very function narrow our vision and focus, in order to understand the unknowable we actually move further away from correctly understanding.......an understanding that surpasses words.
         I read a paper by a young girl (Blair Felder) the other day in which she made these observations. We need to "perceive conventional reality with objective observation laced with awe." I think this speaks to the need to "know the self in order to transcend the self" as Dogen taught. This requires us to find Nirvana, enlightenment, etc. right here - that what is pointed to by these terms is here and now - not somewhere else in another time. She also wrote that if one can, "exhaust the meanings of conceptualization by being contemplative and skeptical of conceptual meaning, one can reawaken to the state of emptiness." That state of emptiness is "I" sans conceptualization, grasping, and aversion.
        I hope this leads to further exploration.
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