It’s been a fair while since I last wrote. I can’t say why, exactly, because from time to time I have had a strong urge to communicate regarding this or that topic. For example, I spent this year’s Thanksgiving week in Taiwan, and had much to say about my experience there. I have also been ruminating a lot about what gets written and said about spirituality, in particular, how much one’s own personal viewpoint colors the conclusions. But mostly, I’ve been wanting to find some way to express the vastness of beauty that I find in almost every detail of life lately. One of the “problems” with beauty is that it is so inexpressible, and yet here we are as humans desperately trying to hold on to it in the form of words, pictures, music, art, poetry, and so forth. Remarkably, these feeble attempts somehow do at times capture an aspect, which is its own little miracle that can be shared amongst us. But in the meantime, between the verbal expressions written here, I find myself sitting in Silent appreciation of all that Is. Nothing in particular to say, nothing in particular to do.
It’s so difficult to describe exactly what I felt and experienced in Taiwan, for example. It was my first time visiting there, and in many ways it was exactly what I expected - noisy, busy, crowded, full of air pollution and commercialism, lots of decrepit-looking buildings … you know, the typical Asian big-city experience. And yet, there was something remarkable lurking beneath the surface for me. As I walked the streets of Taipei at night watching all the scooters whizzing by, I felt such a profound affinity for all the people I saw, and for the culture as a whole. Even the ridiculously commercialized yoga studio I visited there had a mysterious attraction to it, despite the fact that I could find no rational explanation for my experience. My girlfriend and I also spent a whole day in Kenting National Park, where the experience of peace, beauty, and love was far more expected. But even there I was completely overwhelmed by the depth of my love and appreciation for a few moments of just Being there.
I had a big realization recently. You know, the kind of realization where you already got it in a conceptual way a long time ago, but somehow didn’t realize that you hadn’t completely gotten it until right now. It goes like this. There have been countless descriptions said and written about spirituality, many of them quite beautiful and even helpful in our struggle toward awakening. And yet, what I saw is that all those descriptions of the spiritual experience simply aren’t true. Every experience is unique, and defies any and all attempts at classification. To conclude and be completely clear, if you read it in a book (or blog), you can be sure of only one thing … that it isn’t true. What is true, then? Well, I’ll leave that to you to discover for yourself. The only thing I can say is that inexpressible beauty will somehow find it’s way into the picture, eventually if not right away.
A few days ago, one of my friends posted the video below to YouTube. The subject matter is suicide, which recently claimed the life of a close friend of the two young women (one of which is my friend) in the video. While watching it, I found myself so deeply moved by its intent, its simplicity, its expression of the human condition. I don’t really know what else to say, other than that the Heart is so vast, so fragile, and yet so accepting and resilient. I find every concept of myself completely shattered.
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