Calling All Angels

I am experiencing a brilliant demonstration of how our cognitive lives are an aurora borealis of illusions.

I was listening to "Calling All Angels" when I first looked out of the airplane window two nights ago at 4:30 am. After several hours of flying over Pacific water, on a dark and very starry night, I looked up and was thrilled by the sudden appearance of spectacular lights- San Francisco. It was an epiphany moment. Listening to the song again today, I am right back in that moment.

I experienced in the very same instant, these things: First, I saw the glow of lights in purposeful patterns surrounding the San Francisco Bay- the roads, the buildings, the pinnacle of human intellect manifested in this magnificent city, its technology, infrastructure, and functionality. Second, I imagined, because of the variety of structures from which those lights eminated, that below the lights, every manner of human experience was being lived right down close to the earth. Third, I saw, because of my distance above, the huge energy manifestation, drawing its glow from deep inside the earth, the clock ticking unto the day when this city will go dark again.

I lingered without judgement in this simultaneous elation and sadness until I realized that the demise of glowing cities is not tragic, but an eventuality in the sequence of cause and effect. Different than offhanded or intellecutally spoken words, it was a profound, experiential realization.

I turned my mind to God, realizing that we are not created to live forever, as individuals or as a species. Does this seem trite? Every previous moment in which I have had this thought seems trite, but this moment was not.

"Calling All Angels" http://www.andiesisle.com/Calling_All_Angels.html

Shooting at Buddha

This week Yukari enlightened me greatly on the subject of mu. Mu, like most Japanese words, suffers in translation for lack of cultural context in Western language. However, my sits with mu have cracked the door a bit, and Yukari opened it a little wider this week.

I watched Yukari perform her black belt Kyudo (archery) forms. She evidenced the inward focus of mindful action. Later she told me that the target of Kyudo is mu. In other words, the target does not exist as an entity in the discipline. The target is nothing!

AHA!!! That puts the entire event in the body and mind of the archer. The target is not separate from the action. The archer practices the physical act of shooting the arrow with so much mindfulness, that eventually the arrow and the target become one, not through an intentional action which has an object, but through minutely subtle experience with the bow and arrow with the result that the arrow enters the target.

After 30+/- years, I finally get the whole idea presented in the book, ZEN IN THE ART OF ARCHERY. My appreciation of mu is expanded. Cannot wait to tell Roshi about this. Chao-chou says "mu" to the monk who is still shooting at Buddha as if at a target.