Appearances Appearing
By Michael Erlewine
The path of a bird flying across the evening sky leaves no trail or track, nor does writing our name in water. This whole idea of impermanence is always there. How can we live with that hanging over us? I have no idea, but apparently, we can. No choice.
It’s the ‘apparently’ I am looking at here, what we call appearances. The pith dharma texts say that appearance, all appearances, are empty of permanent existence. Not only that, but all appearances are said to be the emptiness itself arising, the ‘emptiness dancing’ as some poets put it. Our own bodies included.
Apparently, appearances appear. Just look around. That’s the dream we are engaged in and always have been. Real enough for me, but one that is hard to wake up from, because I haven’t managed it yet, to wake up fully, not ever, in this life or, as the dharma states, in innumerable lifetimes up until now.
I hear those words, of course, but wake up I can’t seem to. I shake my head, but I’m still right here in this dream we call life and not aware of much of anything beyond that.
Well, if I can’t just snap my fingers and wake up, what can I do about this situation that ‘apparently’ I am not even aware of?
‘Apparently’, according to the dharma texts, it is samsara that I can’t wake up from, this cyclical world of ups, downs, and arounds we are habituated to. That’s a problem, the fact that I don’t feel that uncomfortable in Samsara, so no escape is needed when seemingly nothing or little binds. Perhaps I have to let go of ‘letting go’. Of course, just wait awhile and I could change my view.
Some say that Samsara is mind insisting on separation, duality.
Whatever the case, in dharma we keep polishing until nothing is left but the mirror’s reflection, reflecting nothing.
We have to ‘look’ without eyes and ‘know’ without a knower.
[Midjourney graphic prompted by me.]
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As Bodhicitta is so precious,
May those without it now create it,
May those who have it not destroy it,
And may it ever grow and flourish.