Today, I looked across the river from a table in the outside patio of a restaurant/bar here in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Around me was all the normal noise of such a place. People talking, ladies in a hen party, all wearing Mexican hats, passing by in a group; laughing. The river walkway in front of us was full of passing people.
I was relaxed. And my partner and I were talking sporadically about nothing much. We were enjoying the ambiance of the place on a lazy Saturday afternoon.
In a idle thought, I’d remembered what I’d been reading earlier in a book by D.T. Suzuki about Zen. A very hard thing to understand or ‘get’; given that the words and concepts that one might use to explain it are basically anathema to what it is. I’d seen Suzuki trying to scale that impossible wall over and over in my reading.
Then I glanced across the river at the trees on the other side. And I was amazed to see that they were standing silent and timeless; as if I’d suddenly discovered them in an eternal moment that I’d only just noticed.
The noise around me continued and all visuals were still present; as was the view across the river. But the trees and the grass I was seeing over there were profoundly different.
It was as if I was watching a movie and suddenly I could also see the unchanging screen beneath the movements and changes in the movie.
The normal world around me was still flickering with change and impermanence. But on the other side of the river …. I don’t know what can be said about the other side … except that its ‘is-ness’ utterly simple and inconceivably immediate.
I knew directly somehow that if I did anything other than remain open to what I was seeing, that the vision would vanish into the ever present obscuring world of thoughts and concepts.
I looked away and then back again several times. And each time the profound screen beneath the movie presented itself behind the tumult.
Obvious beyond any qualification. It was a ground of being there behind all the shifting impressions and ideas born of cognition. And all I had to do was look.
I returned to my Margarita and Ceviche and gazed at my partner across the table. The afternoon already had a deep sense of peace to it – and it still did. But now there seemed to be an almost magical quality to it. I turned and gazed across the river several more times as we sat there.
As we sat, I savored the peace and love of the material, human word-oriented world with all of its ever moving parts and interpretations.
I could feel the warmth of my partner’s gaze and her love. And those blessings, and the taste of the Ceviche, were all clearly there and giving me pleasure.
But something else had been given to me there as well. I am such a deeply lucky man in this life.