Sunday, February 26, 2012

Meditation


Hello again.  

I remember once, heading up the Loxahatchee River out of Jupiter Florida.  We left the busy bay with motor boats, condos and houses with river docks.  We were heading for the river source and as we passed under bridges, the river  got smaller, changing from wide bay to river and becoming the size of a country lane.  The mangrove trees bent into the water, fish jumped ahead of our boat and rounding one corner we saw an alligator larger than our boat. There was a kind of shuffled talk between us, more like the sounds of leaves underfoot and the music of the dipping of paddles in the water.  The branches came closer and eventually we were sliding underneath them, silently ducking low.  Thoughts of the Manatee that we were  told of, living deep in the water, a behemoth munching on sea grass, somewhere beneath the boat brought my heartbeat forward and filled my consciousness.  Progress was slow now, inching forward, everything in present time.  Finally the river stopped us.  Wordless, we sat in the water, filed up with the moment.  We stayed for a long time.  Neither of us needed anything. 
 I thought: This is meditation.


Offstage cues:  Water, Silence, Plenty


Here is a poem by Rumi


Say I am you
I am dust particles in sunlight.
I am the round sun.
To the bits of dust I say, Stay.
To the sun, Keep moving.
I am morning mist,
and the breathing of evening.
I am wind in the top of a grove,
and surf on the cliff.
Mast, rudder helmsman, and keel,
I am also the coral reef they founder on.
I am a tree with a trained parrot in its braches.
Silence, thought, and voice.
The musical air coming through a flute,
a spark of stone, a flickering
in metal. Both candle,
and the moth crazy around it.
Rose, and the nightingale
lost in the fragrance.
I am all order of beign, the circling galaxy,
the evolutionary intelligence, the lift,
and the falling away. What is,
and what isn't. You who know
Jelaluddin, You the one
in all, say who
I am. Say I
am you.


The Essential Rumi translated by Barks and Moyne

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