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Buddha & Blossoms of Light
A shell full of holes
or freedom from knives
better to vanish beneath lily pads
to be a wandering immortal for a thousand years
-Song Boren (China, b. 13th Century)
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Red Pine helps throw light upon the poem -
The Chinese believed turtles lived thousands of years and had knowledge of the future. They drilled into and heated their upper shell and lower plastron to access this knowledge, interpreting the resulting cracks to predict coming events.
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The Chinese philosopher sage Chuang Tzu (d. 286 BC) was fishing along the Pu River when two envoys from the state of Chu approached him and said, "Our lord wishes to entrust oversight of his realm to you."
Without bothering to put down his pole, Chuang Tzu answered, "I've heard your king has a 3,000-year-old turtle shell on his ancestral altar. Do you think the turtle would rather be dead and have its shell so honored or be alive and dragging its tail in the mud? Leave me be. I'd rather drag my tail in the mud."
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"Vanishing" is not a bad deal, after all. It can keep us out of a lot of trouble.
The spiritual self does not need to be seen or heard. One can appear where one needs to appear without coming out of hiding.
One can say what one needs to say from the hiding. Not being seen means enhanced presence; not being heard means enriched speech. And not doing means doing is more fruitful.
Hiding is fully being present but not propping up a self by recognition or notoriety. Hiding means intimacy without struggle. By not pushing the self forward, the heart makes itself known.
Meditation and solitude are practices in hiding. When you are alone in devotion, disappearing, you are not asking anything from anyone, maybe not even from your God. We need to learn to pray, asking for and doing nothing. Then, you are nobody. Vanishing is worship. You are hiding in God. You are what you are before birth and death.
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We may think being seen and heard is vital for others. After all, everyone around us is being seen and heard. They are on stage, playing and talking their parts. So, is that where we all need to be? Persons all about are working tirelessly. Can you relax and enjoy doing nothing? Persons must be seen - or so they say and think - but can you vanish? This is to say, as the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart (Germany, b. 1200s), "The eye by which I see God is the same eye by which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love."
When the body drops, the world goes on. When the body drops, the world for the body is no more. Few will remember us. Who will think of us the day after the body drops? Nothing will stop. What we were in our hiding continues but nowhere, for it was nowhere anywhere.
Vanishing means nowhere. We did not come from anywhere. We go nowhere. We can learn to live, now, nowhere. We have no address. You observing you, witness of all forms... Where does that you abide? Where can you go to find that? If you go looking, you look. So, who looks?
We need to live this hiding and practice it. We can vanish every day. Then, the self-fog evaporates in the Light, creating a potential for intimacy and freedom to enjoy, allowing being to be, do, be seen, and be heard; then, deep communion with Life is possible through the forms. Presence shines. Welcomes.
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Being to be being presents itself as only, simply itself - being. Being does not have to be seen or heard or do. Do you? You can speak out of not needing to speak. You can act without needing to act. Then, speech and action bear the mark of Presence, of Spirit.
Speech and action fly. Did you not know they have wings? Vanish, and they are already in flight. Hide, and you fly. Where? Nowhere; so, sky.
Hence, there is no vanishing into or hiding from, only a turning back into the Source. This is the Great Return to nowhere right where you are, without leaving where you are. See, where lives in harmony with nowhere when where lives in and from nowhere. Then, there remains peace.
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2024. Permission is given to use photographs and writings with credit given to the copyright owner.
*Brian's book is An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love. The book is a collection of poems Brian wrote based on wisdom traditions, predominantly Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi, with extensive notes on the poetry's teachings and imagery.
*Poem translation and note by Red Pine. In Dancing with the Dead: The Essential Red Pine Translations.
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