i bring sunshine to seattle.

i'e been getting heads up about seattle weather left and right. rains. downcast. hwubby says on the phone, bring raincoat, umbrella. hey, i get it, people. it's wet. it's depressing. nonetheless i am bright and light as i walk out of the airport. what do i see? cloudless sky. california weather. my niece-in-law says, you bring good luck, suk wah, you bring the sun. i say, thank you, i do.

all kidding aside, i do have the sun within me. in fact, according to the scriptures, which are really meditation experiences of super duper advanced meditators, i have a thousand suns. as a matter of fact, i hold all the stars, planets, galaxies, those that we know of their existence and those we don't yet know that they are somewhere out there in some corner of this infinitely vast universe, which is probably just one speck in the innumerable collection of universes. as i type this my mind is a little bit dizzy, kind of hard to hold all this. what's the term? right, 'wrap around it.' and so i take a deep breath in, let a long one out, and let loose any rigid horizons in the field of awareness.

as i soak in the gorgeous sunshine, shimmering waters and the vibrant life all around me i also see them as a glimpse of what i have within.

not getting caught up in the finite

today's meditation is one of those when there's nothing to do but to take refuge again and again and again in the breath flow. towering thought waves suck attention under their massive momentum. they sweep awareness brutally along. i am literally under water at the wild mercy of mental activity. at the times when i catch myself reacting to the thoughts with more thoughts i manage to tenuously cling to a thread of breath. from the horizon of this vast turmoil i hear a faint recurring echo. it will go away. i will sit through this. and so i do. while it is a struggle i emerge from meditation with a renewed sense of watchfulness. i realize what would happen if i don't strive to stay close to the breath as much as i can. i would block grace and be unable to see what i ought to see. whatever the contents of the mental activity and even though they feel so real and do contain some grains of truth, like rare grains of gold in a huge mound of sand, they distract me from being connected to my own true nature, from taking what are reflections in the mirror of consciousness to be consciousness itself, from getting caught up in the finite waves in the infinite ocean of consciousness.