Videos hosted by Michael Erlewine

Spring is so late in coming this year that what usually is a relatively slow parade of spring flowers (always too fast for me) this year is coming all at once – in a rush. Although I waited all winter long for a chance to photograph these beauties, it is physically almost impossible. There they are, everywhere, appearing together as a crowd.

Then, to just show how crazy things can be, instead of photographing this rush of flowers as best I can, I find myself in the studio building interview sets and backgrounds instead of out in the woods photographing. It just goes to show you… some lesson or another. And that is just on the outside.

Looking inside, the last couple of weeks (between these two eclipses) have been very revealing personally. Even more is going on in there, but with less fanfare. Fade to Black.

I guess that where words fail is when life begins. I have often written about the effort required to build a meditation practice and that all of that effort and the devices required to persevere in dharma practice at some time themselves have to be removed, because our own effort and ambition (however virtuous) stand in the way of realizing the goal of meditation practice, which is the meditation itself. Meditation is ultimately effortless.

When that train leaves the station, it is best to be on it.

And this transition (this transference of consciousness) is just that, the process of transferring our identity from focusing on the means and goals to actually achieving them. To do this, all of the scaffolding we have built in the process of practice (the whole effort) has to be deconstructed and removed, piece by piece, like the old game of Pick-Up-Sticks.

Of course this is difficult to put in words and would take pages. As Shakespeare wrote this poem I wrote "Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse."

PURITY IS

Purity,
Is:
Being,
Empty,
And…
Without a trace.


[Photo I took of a Bloodroot flower.]