Tag: mindfulness.

• sit.

  The night sky. As comforting as it is confronting. Tonight it would be her zendo, her meditation hall, as she sought to blend the inner and the outer, the finite and the abyss, the now and the forever.

  She had hiked the high glacial valley walls during the bright daylight hours, and with the day coming to a close she found herself on a rocky, exposed ridgeline—exactly where she wanted to be. The words of her guru refracted around her skull; it was he who had told her the kind of space—not only physically, but spiritually—to seek out, and this spot seemed perfect. From her bag she pulled her zafu, the round meditation cushion she carried with her almost everywhere; worn, tattered and well-travelled. And several moments later, a rolled-up royal blue rug—the threads of luscious lapis lazuli reminiscent of the descending dusk—emerged from the bag as well, which she unfurled with a snap. Right leg folded under left as she made her way into lotus pose.

  Pulling the cowl of her robes back, she felt the ever-so-fair night breeze on her shaven scalp. She tilted her head upwards, mesmerised by the Milky Way, now furled like her rug, in all of it’s ancient glory. The astral arch—omnipresent and omniscient—held the memories of every sunrise, every breath, every death, that has ever taken place. A river of stars, it meandered towards its mouth, before dissolving into the sea; the ocean of her awareness. Of the awareness. All awarenesses. The memory of origin, of what was; though, also, what has always been. The night sky, now black as pitch, dark as the abyss of self-delusion. A finite Universe containing infinite multitudes, bound by a timeless time, a deathless death. Enclosed entropy, a swirling churning maelstrom of birth, death, and rebirth, where everything stays the same.

  2026.09.20

• delusion.

  Delusional about the personal,

  perception is apocryphal not foundational.

  Weaving the liminal and temporal,

  into a fallacy of the continual.

  Doubt in deduction of the dual,

  awareness is a single jewel.

  2026.09.16

• opinions.

  The complaints and constraints of mates,

  and bothers of others’ mothers,

  are something over no thing.

  Fusses and cusses about perceptual parses.

  Ideation evolving from information,

  we become militia mulling over minutia.

  2026.09.09

• there.

  The bright ruby sunrise made the horizon hard to identify, the red sky smudged with the red earth below. Several of the senior resident monks huddled together just outside the monastery’s entrance—a thick whitewashed gatehouse, framing heavy, ornately carved, impregnable wooden doors—before bowing in unison in gratitude and bidding him farewell. The heavy doors sealed shut behind them. He picked up the woven rattan basket at his feet, then adjusted the tumpline on his head. The contents of the basket were invaluable—manuscripts and scrolls, wisdom and teachings from a past long gone. Despite the early morning hours, the air already sizzled, the baked landscape preparing for another hot day. Enveloped and wrapped solely in a long length of white cotton cloth to ward off the elements, he pulled a hem down over his forehead, shielding his eyes from the scorching sun.

  He took a first step, then another. The first of many. The road—more of an unpaved track—stretched is a straight line all the way to the sky, a rarely travelled line bisecting the undisturbed crimson. Almost immediately his waraji straw sandals became covered in sprinklings of ochre earth. Due to the sparse population in the area—a few camel herders and nomadic families—there would be no inns or caravanserai on his way; so the rattan basket also contained parcels of cooked rice and a gourd of water. Whether it was to be enough for the journey remained to be seen, but it would have to be.

  Each day blended into the prior, as one breath into another—a concertina of chronology, the elasticity of experience, the illusions of the linear. The resident monks had informed him the journey to the next monastery would take five or six days; so he was in no hurry. Things would unfold as they will. Above he saw a formation of cranes, and smiled—he empathised with their hunger, having probably not eaten for weeks as they complete their annual migratory mission. He also noticed a new found nimbleness to his steps; buoyed by witnessing the resilience of the crane, he found a new reservoir of endurance to plumb.

  His stomach growled—primarily in hunger, but also in anger—demanding more than the meagre rice rations he had been providing it once a day. Sitting in the discomfort, his well-attuned awareness acknowledged these grumblings and growlings were only temporary sensations, and would not be fatal; at least during this journey.

  The next day—sometime before noon, based on where the Sun was hanging overhead—he saw a shimmering in the distance. The distinctive sparkling of the whitewashed walls of a monastery.

  Knowing there were only a handful of humble monks cloistered at the isolated monastery—not the one thousand or so housed at the one he had journeyed from—and knowing they might be preoccupied, he sat. And waited. He meditated and absorbed the here and now. Though, in the now, ‘here’ ceases to have much meaning–there is no ‘there’ for it to contrast with; in the present, ‘there’ can only ever be ‘here’. A crane called far above.

  2026.09.06

• equanimity.

  Rebuke of now’s quintessence,

  is blocking unmediated experience.

  Yet, such is such,

  and the rest a crutch.

  Craving the fable of stable,

  we revere and enable,

  all we’re able.

  Destined to detritus,

  is the experience of all sentience.

  Object-obliviating omnipresence,

  the essence of presence.

  Finding ease in the degrees

  of the unknown frees.

  Contentment in possibilities and probabilities,

  peace of sight and sensibilities.

  2026.09.02

• ritual.

  Obfuscate obliteration,

  ideas pulled into oblivion.

  Dissolution of information,

  on the exhalation.

  Hubristic construction,

  an arrogant comprehension.

  Temporal disintegration,

  annihilation in meditation.

  Inversion of expectation

  in the subversion of separation.

  A return to origination.

  through ritual connection.

  2026.08.26

• wisps.

  Clouds of wisteria and jasmine clung to the small cottage, like a mountain peak cloaked in fog. Along horizontal parallel beams the climbers crawled—the low pitch of the roof also luring them higher—bringing with them the scent of Spring and bees eager to harvest the fresh pollen on offer. Delicately, she placed the incense holder on the table; there was a barely audible dink as the clay base reached the table top. It was of simple design; a clay circle, with a small opening in the centre, to which the incense stick would be stuffed. Using her left hand, she ran her fingertips up the vertical incense stick until she reached its length. The miniscule bumps and contours confirmed its handmade, hand-rolled provenience. Her right hand held an open flame—a piece of paper alight—and she gently brought this to the end of the incense. A huuft signaled the fire had done its job, and soon wafts of sandalwood wound their way towards the ceiling, drifting and dancing on the breeze allowed by the many open windows of the house.

  Her sight might have corroded, but her sense of smell had not. She picked up scents of the sandalwood, along with botanicals the artisan had included in its creation; notably mixed with the bouquet of the resident climbers outside. She strained her memory, trying to recall it as she had seen as a child; surely these soft scents were riding the waves of wisps emanating from the incense stick—or at least as she recalled it.

  How many—she would never know for certain—of her memories had become mis-remembers, reliable lies, unable to be validated by vision of the now? The memory of the scent would endure longer than the event, though forever through the warped lens of memory. Surely this was true of all of us, she thought; removed from time and place, we still yet claim knowledge based on poorly transcribed notes jotted on worn parchment of the mind.

  She sat on a cushion next to a large window. Tilting her head to experience the breeze on her cheeks, a subtle symbol of the Spring blooming beyond the borders of the room. All she knew was right now—not reliant on faded falsities—was she could smell the wonderful aroma of sandalwood, sublimating with the scent of wisteria from outside the ajar window. With a ffift, the incense stick burned out, extinguished.

  2026.08.23

• chai.

  The near-full Moon lay down lunar light all over the arid landscape. It gave everything a milky tone, sharply contrasting with the midnight blue shadows, which ran from the Moon’s gaze. Low shrubs and rolling rocky meadows dominated the plateau here, all bound tight under the Milky Way above—a convex strip seemingly securing the serene night sky. With the scene barely varying in its tone of sparse monotony, he decided to press on until dawn encroached on the horizon.

  With the slender fingers of a new day beginning to filigree the morning sky, he acknowledged it was time to pause and set up camp. The hobbled camels made a fuss, as they always do. It was understandable, he empathised with their collective animosity. Several bellowed in contempt, then others signalled their approval of this disapproval with long low lamentations.

  As the Moon sunk lower, he began to gather nearby scrub to start a fire. Once the orange flickers had warmed his fingers, he set a brass teapot right into the flames. Covered in dents and scratches—a knowing, a world-weary patina—he had carried it with him for at least a decade now. A small handful of leaves were retrieved from a tin tucked away in a pair of saddlebags slung across an unhappy camel. Boiling water ricocheted inside teapot, the steam announcing that tea was soon to follow. Easily he held the teacup in his hand, holding it up level with the horizon, and directed the spout towards the vessel’s waiting lip. Deliberately he sipped, savouring the smokey essence; a flavour that seemed to transcend time, as if tinged with the experiences of centuries past.

  Using the sleeve of his flannel shirt, he wiped the last vestiges of tea from his beard. Kicking away a few of the larger rocks, he laid down a small, intricate yet well-loved rug—the oasis towns in the area were famed for their textiles and carpets—on a flat area of red earth. His tired legs effortlessly lowered him, and then crossed themselves in front of him. As if almost to steady himself—physically, yes; but more importantly, metaphysically—he anchored his palms squarely over his knees. He paused; then emptied his lungs of their last remnants of oxygen. Again he paused, before closing his eyes, and ever so slowly inhaling. As he gently opened his eyes, his vision was filled with the innumerable stars above, though bit-by-bit they were being consumed by dawn’s light. Like a silhouette burned into the eyes from too bright a light, the Milky Way was seared across the sky; though ghostly, two-dimensional. His thinking gradually faded—the cogs of thought, the constant clockwork of analysis, grinding to a halt under the immense presence of the cobalt half-dome overhead. A laminar flow of awareness spiralled upward—inward—into space, into nothingness.

  2026.08.16

• medusa.

  A liquid desert. Oases of life here and there; upwellings of plankton, balls of baitfish, the corpse of a recently-passed whale offering up a feast to other ocean-dwellers. Above and beyond, mellow dunes of waves, blue as far as the eye of the albatross can see. However, there are itinerants, adventurers, those wandering beyond the enclaves and safe harbours of life. Seabirds, sharks, cetaceans, searchers, and scavengers looking for lunch.

  Bobbing in an ocean gyre that initially generated strength on the other side of the planet, the gelatinous giant was amorphous under the water, suspended from gravity. Its bell pulsated rhythmically while flecks of blue, ruby, citrine, and indigo were visible amongst the tangle of its trailing tentacles—some many metres long—their ends unseen, beyond the visibility of the open ocean. Embodying surrender, its direction, diet, and desires at the whims of the ocean, accepting things as they come, and go. Apotheosis of ebb and flow. Unburdened by a thinking mind—beyond the grip of of thinking’s manufactured past and future—it experiences all at once; and yet is deathless—a moment-to-moment time traveller, free to roam, unshackled from temporality. Oblivious to an illusion of control, it wanders wherever the ocean sees fit. Sailing both time and space, unimpeded.

  For aeons it meanders, having witnessed infinite dawns, each more beautiful, more alluring that the last. Clouds speed over head, while decades pass with equal abandon. Mountains form, impermanent things—all things—return to dust. Change; yet there is no measurement, no desired state, nothing not as it shouldn’t be. Nothing outside of now. Following the currents and winds, as it did yesterday and the day before and the centuries before than.

  In the now, everything is as it is.

  2026.08.12

• incantation.

  Yet-to-be thought,

  mindfulness in nought.

  Sit in the unknown,

  before bliss has flown.

  The moment we decide,

  peace we deride.

  Inside concepts and ideas,

  we find egos and fears.

  A breath, a pause,

  delays thinking’s maws.

  Vacuous fluctuation,

  total deconstruction,

  multidimensional incantation.

  2026.08.09