Friday, July 29, 2005

Solitude & The Laughing Buddha Part 2


I waded out, still in my swimsuit. The water is not hardly deep enough here...just wide. It is hard for me to get wet enough...but I manage to find a place where I can be in the midde. and stand with only my upper chest in the cool sweet air.

SILENCE.

It moves in on me

the opposite way

noise does

like little invitations

to come out!

It is so quiet.

Everything stories down to almost nothing.

Quiet.

Has it been that long

I have not heard human voices?

Yes.

It has been that long

very long

too long.

It stories down

deeper further and farther

deeper still.

I feel suddenly

ENRAPTURED

How could I EVER

hate being solitary!?


I am simply in delirium as the water washes by, lazy and lovingly. The sun sparkes off the waters...the canyons sing. My head is feeling hot so I dip into the coolness like a kind of unearthly waterery invisible chocolate...and spray the mane back with my big hands and laugh!

In this moment I am not a christian, I am a buddhist, then in the next I am not a buddhist, but in love with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Both are true. I laugh and splash about...alone but not at all so.

In silence it all storied down, then, after a time, it came back alive within new ears. I heard the slight woodpecker determined like a winged Sisyphus, and the finch dancing and darting in sweetness, the flap of dragonflies and the pheasants in their skiddish spray.

But always the water.

Then God took my head in his hands and kissed me on the forehead like a the father I never had, and I looked over and saw the Buddha winking at me from the shoreline.

And I was grateful...deeply grateful. Posted by Picasa

2 comments:

tabitha jane said...

i love the spirituality of water. and how the elements seem to interact with us in a way that speaks of god.

so why do we mess it all up?

Obi-Mac BakDon said...

Of course there is no way to answer that. But we can choose to appreciate it for what it is. I have always felt a deep connection with water.

One thing I will say, I think it was for good reason that the Buddha shows up suddenly in this story (which was not planned ahead). Zen Buddhism presents a sort of natural corrective to all the crap we overlay life with.

I'm not really a Buddhist, but I do have deep respect for that tradition and should probably learn a great deal more. Of course, every one of the Buddhists I know are wonderful.