 |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
| AHYMSIN newsletter, Issue - December 2011 | ||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
A Walk in the Winter Dawnby Joanne SullivanThe magic of winter in the foothills of the Himalayas is the flowers. They don’t quit. The early morning chill is warmed by the rising light in the bougainvilleas that form protective arches, vaulted ceilings, their own Place where Man and God almost touch. The mist is the silent trumpet of a new day. The chrysanthemums are bursting light and the fragrance of the honeysuckle sings away the winter chill. The tendril fingers of the hibiscus on the steps from the sadhaka cottages to the crystal Shiva lingam temple touch the akasha, the vastness of space from which all beings arise and to which they return. We remember the world in a bindu as it remembers us: That infinitesimally small dot—the gateway—at the center of every mandala, of every life and all of life, from which all worlds emerge and through which they withdraw. In the manasa puja, the internal meditation, the mental offering of a flower recalls this singular act. What am I in the glory of nature but a part of the same one inhalation, the same exhalation that the whole earth stream breathes as one? What hand could bear to pick a flower, to try to own This, this magnificence? I remember once in Honesdale when Swami Rama roamed those grounds, Dr. Arya took a small group on a nature walk through the splendid deer-filled woods, carpeted with neon-orange newts, whom scientists have studied for the way their pineal glands, not the eyes, perceive light. Humans also field light through the pineal gland in the crown of the head, a good reason not to wear a hat. I’m sure this is why Swami Nitya told me to take my wooly hat off in the bright winter sun one day when I really wasn’t cold at all. Getting back to that day in the woods, one member of the group kept tearing leaves off of bushes and then tearing them some more. It was not an intentionally cruel act. Rather, it was an unconscious violation. The boy had no clue that all of life was burgeoning in a leaf. How could anyone explain this to the innocent fellow? When Dr. Arya finally got back to his room, he wept. For more about the flowers here, see: Flowers of India Catalog at: http://www.flowersofindia.in/catalog/himalayan.html (Pictures courtesy of Isaac Sullivan and Chia Yuan W of Taiwan)
|
||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
