(This short piece was initially drafted Aug. 10, 201717, at Foz Iquasu, Brazil, and finished in Orgyen Hermitage, New Zealand.)
We were recently in Brazil for 5 weeks, exploring dharmas of natural awakening, contemplative science and mahamudra with a large number of people in Sao Paulo, and Botucatu. After three very full weeks of teaching, a smaller group travelled to the Pantanal, one of the great wetlands of the planet. Our journey finished with a visit to Iquasu falls.
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There is a wholeness about living.
It’s not cracked, not glued together . . .
Feelings, values, perceptions and conceptions, tumbling and flowing
through each other, and with each other, wherever we look . . .
. . . if we look !
Every experience is experienced by someone.
And every someone, is a matrix of looking;
a unique contribution of knowing,
a collaboration of domains and dimensions.
To survive we must look,
and not only look, as if through looking we might see what is;
To survive we must look with passion, with caring, with discernment
and with playful zest.
Looking as an act of participation, as together we bring forth worlds.
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There is a seamlessness about experience.
We make wholes with whatever is at hand.
All of us do this; able and disabled, educated and unschooled, privileged and exploited.
And this dancing: atoms, molecules, cells and communities of every conceivable shape
and form, brings forth everything.
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The story of our beingness traces patterns of ephemeral progression
on canvasses of memories –
The myths of our making,
a planet awaking –
The music arising in the ears of instruments and voices,
singing this gloriousness into being.
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Feeling our way into the mystery of wetlands,
the vast roiling of lives and living and geologic process called the Pantanal.
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Cutting the outboard engine.
A sudden silence,
with dusking sky – rose red incrementing towards deep blue,
and two Crested Screamers (Chauna torquata) silhouetted atop a vine clad bush.
As we feel the rising chorus,
complex syncopations of millions of frogs,
the simple declarations of settling bird calls,
and the omni-pulsing drone of insect life, humid warm and all around.
A blessed remembrance, a re-mergence in the greater family-ness of this living world.
Domains of perception reverberating in, and as, and through, domains of perception.
Weavings of oneness,
Transformations transforming.
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And as we do this,
suffering humans,
toxic with small vision;
bent with fear and frustration and greed and desire,
hurl threats of armageddon,
tiny minds, casting long shadows,
a tragic assemblage of stardust,
a suicidal story of disintegrating empires
fading into the much older chorus of frog and bird and wonderstruck primate
reverencing the setting sun and the rising moon.
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Our recent experience in Brazil was a fabulous weaving of fresh possibility, beautiful aspirations and ancient mysteries unfolding. Mary and I give a great embrace of thanks to each one of the beings who directly or indirectly helped to make this visit such a rich blessing for many.
Image may be NSFW.
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
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All photos, except the last one, were taken by Mary Jenkins.