The Everyday Sublime

                Villa des Amis 8/4/2017 LPC

When one tugs at a single thing in Nature,                                     
He finds it attached to the rest of the world.  
--John Muir    
                                                                                    

Good snowflakes. They don’t fall anywhere else.                                                                                                 --Layman Pang                             

The mystical is not how the world is, but what it is.                                                                                      --Ludwig Wittgenstein

Meditation originates and culminates in the everyday sublime. Meditation is about embracing what is happening in this moment. I do not reject the experience of the mystical. I reject only the view that the mystical is concealed behind what is merely apparent, that it is anything other than what is occurring in time and space right now. It is the ongoing cultivation of a sensibility. It is a way of attending and intending to cultivate an understanding of experience within a framework of ethical values and goals. As a sensibility it enables me to cultivate this understanding of my moment-to-moment experiences. It is developing a perspective that engenders another kind of response to what is happening, not to me, but is just happening. It begins with my breath, my primordial relationship to the fabric of the world in which I live. It lifts me out of reactivity and into just seeing, knowing even. To dwell in concentration through mindfulness of breathing is to dwell in a noble place, a sacred place, a place within the primary rhythms of the body that link me seamlessly to the universe or, as Muir said, “When one tugs at a single thing in Nature. He finds it attached to the rest of the world.”  This sacred place is not found in a transcendent realm beyond oneself or the world; it is disclosed here and now. This sacred dimension of experience opens up as I let go of the constrictive, obsessive concern with “me” and “mine.” This sacred dimension is excessive and is not manageable. It pours forth relentlessly, voluptuously and evaporates when I reach out to seize and control it. This sacred place, dwelling, dimension is better known as loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. Focusing on my breath not only grounds me in the rhythm of life, it also allows me to feel and relate to everything else that is alive and breathing; experiencing the Oneness, the interconnectivity, the interdependence with not only all that breathes, but all that is. Of course, I have to guard against thinking that the breath is “mine.” After all, it is not “me” that is breathing. This process happens with or without my conscious awareness, with or without my attending to it. I have to act as a disinterested observer and then I can catch the body in the act of inhaling and exhaling of its own accord. It is then with insight that I might ask, “Who is breathing?” It is here in this moment of realization that I am able to feel an awed participation in and indebtedness to life itself.