Magnificent Being

Woods Elliott, 22nd February 2010

The seeker of enlightenment, like the fisherman, needs a calm readiness without impatience, and foremost, a willingness to be still and wait a good long time, as if for a bite, as long as a fish might hesitate before feeling safe enough to approach the bait.

It’s also like stalking. Think how long the heron can wait, still as a stick, for just the right moment to seize upon the fish.

Or like surfing. You have to spend a lot of idle time out there, amongst the mounting waves and breakers, needing to be in just the right spot to take advantage of the very occasional big and perfect wave that comes along. You can’t surf a perfect wave if you’re not sitting on the board and intent on what the sea’s developing.

As the awakened spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle puts it: we need to learn how to become more fully “present” with the stillness of this world.

The sages would agree you can’t rush forth towards enlightenment like a drunken fool nor wailing two year old. You have to wait and concentrate on waiting, very quietly, in utter stillness, wait with all your grace like a stalking heron, wait through all the hardship and pains of waiting, and when you get so good at it, it no longer even matters if the waiting ends, or better still, the waiting becomes joyful for its own sake, then and only then, when there’s no longer desire and craving, when the seeker no longer seeks..truth will be granted, what is sought will be found, and all the lights will come on in the darkness, the unknown will be known, and all the mysteries will be unveiled.

As you can see, this is well worth waiting for.

Iceberg

1.

I could draw poetry out of silence

with the patience of a fisherwoman

I have cut my circle in the ice

and wait.

2.

I want to find the courage to dive deep

beyond conception

to hammer diamonds

from the glassy wall

suck hard at meaning

to make transparent,

the opaque.

I want to trace with burning fingers

the unique and perfect pattern

of each frost flower

to wear a skin so thin

my blood’s heat will melt

the edge of ice

and make the inert flow.

3.

I want to write poetry with muscle

words that can’t be

pummelled into submission

but swagger

seeking across a page.

I want a new vocabulary for living

a grammar for contradictions

where mind and body rhyme

and my heart’s beat

sounds

in  the sea.

Rose Diamond