Monika's weekly inner voice drawings:
Q: What is today's wisdom?
A: "Be where you are; otherwise you will miss your life."
- Buddha
"I have a simple philosophy: Fill what is empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches."
- Alice Longworth Roosevelt
Posts
I will indulge myself tonight with this drawing. The center figure, my newborn son, Sebastian, born 9/9 at 9 lbs. I like the number 9, the right side of the drawing, the nine’s circle, and enclosed within it is Sebastian’s birth earlier today; the circle of the nine, the womb from which we all pass through towards our current incarnation. The womb as a portal embodying the wisdom and compassion we need to live an enlightened life. The tree-like branches within the circle are the arteries of the placenta from where the exchange of life occurs between the unborn child and mother , between unenlightened human and pure awareness. And then there is also within the circle the night sky, a Van Gogh sky intensifying the mystery of rigpa, “like a star in the depths of an azure sky." This unstained reality, as it is, much like the newborn infant, brings only joy for all beings, without exception. Look at that cat, how wise he is, as he looks down and, with wisdom and love, at his friend, who represents all friends who are seekers by their curiosity. And to his right, another friend, as if emerging from the portal womb ready to take on the task of seeking, with only the joy that play can bring. And the task is this: approaching each moment with a perceptual cognition that sees reality as it is, the suchness beyond things that exists only within things and without the negative afflictive emotions snagging its view. The kind that ends a perfect silence.
ReplyDeleteAcrostic for Sebastian Jordi
Suchness is one of those beyond things
Ending a perfect silence:
Beyond the leaf enclosing the
Air breathing me, beyond
Such things as cells
That are now your heart, beyond my
Intention to love in your need of me guiding you, beyond
Apples and the limbs sinking in sky from holding them
Now dropping off in the ripeness and ripples of change:
Jubilation beckons me at your arrival
Opening like the sun you have quietly
Radiated, beyond your brother’s waiting
Deepening in my heart like that greeny leaf
Inside the joy, as you approach me as if for the last time.
I am glad that someone can make sense out of my drawings :) ... just kidding, but you definitely bring fresh interpretations to the drawings that might have gone unnoticed.
ReplyDeleteAs a 6/6 I relate strongly to Sebastian's birthday of 9/9: it's just a number-flip away :)
I enjoyed your poem but was baffled about the last line "...as if for the last time". I was expecting "...as if for the first time." I would like to hear your take on that.
i have heard that in Tibet, the monks place their cups upside down prior to going to bed as a way to gain insight into impermanence. As we understand the nature of impermanence, we orient ourselves to this very moment for, although all moments, past, future, and present exist, this is the only true moment of reality: this moment of now is not the present but presence. To live one's life as if this "time" will be the last, is to appreciate how precious this time is. Paradoxically, of course, this positioning, if you will, makes the last time always the "first time." :) That is the suchness.
ReplyDelete