namaste on new year, new day, new moment.
elf sits with boua mon, a weaver in a village across the mekong. they met in 2010. she is gentle and kind.
her smiling laughter is infectious. women sit, sharing food, stories.
she looms silk threads. click, clack. click-clack. diamond designs. abundance.
I sat up straight, inhaled three deep breaths and exhaled far out into emptiness.
I centered my unconscious on the paper filled with nothing.
The entire world has been reduced to a blank sheet of white paper.
My wisdom mind of intent became water. It was quiet, calm and still with concentration and focus.
I listened to brush, ink and paper. I am a conduit.
Be the brush, be the ink, be the water, be the paper.
Each essence is pure, free, clear and luminous.
My useless tongue flapped in the cold December Himalayan wind.
Stories and songs are birds. I heard children laughing and singing. They greeted each other in the babble of nothing, playing with strings of word pearls. They dreamed with their eyes open.
When we are asleep we are awake.
Is handwriiting alive?
After they cut out my tongue I started writing script.
I found a compressed black Chinese ink stick with yellow dragons breathing fire. I added a little water to a grey stone surface and placed the ink in the center.
Then, using my right hand, as Master Liu in Chengdu showed me, I turned the stick in a clockwise motion. Black ink ebbed into liquid as a drop of water rippled a pond.
After collecting ink I picked up my long heavy brown brush. Pure white hair. After soaking it in water for three minutes to relax it’s inner tension I spread out thin delicate paper.
I placed my right foot at an angle, left foot straight, my left palm flat on the table with fingers spread. I dipped the brush in the recessed part of the stone to absorb ink then slowly dragged it along an edge removing excess.
I savored the weight and heft. My brush has it own personality and character. There are at least 5,000 characters in my written language. I have much to learn and a long way to travel with this unknowing truth.
Namaste,
The Bayon from the 12th century at Angkor Wat features 48 faces. All directions.
Immense and powerful.
This slide show also includes images of detailed carvings from the main Angkor temple, depicting "Churning The Sea of Milk," an ancient Sanskrit Hindu story.
Metta.
Namaste,
The demanding accusatory tone of voice is always an admonishing attitude of voice how reality is. Shanghai commands are simple and direct.
Heels strike cold hard pavement in darkness. The sharpness belongs to a girl escaping from family for the night. Muted voices of an old couple walking through narrow concrete canyons echo as heels fade.
An elevator door opened on the 11th floor of a five-star business hotel in Shanghai.
A beautiful Chinese girl, 20, in a white dress clutching a small black purse stared at a scuffed marble floor. Small puddles of rain water gathered around her shoes.
She raised her face from the ground.
Deep dark brown rings circled old, tired, fearful eyes hiding her heart's knowledge, revealing her soul.
There was no place to hide, no magical cosmetic concealing the truth of everything she knew. The woman and witness instinctivily understood each other. Passing toward another temporary hope, another ethereal reality.
She was on the wrong floor and pressed another number. Doors closed. She was moving up in the world. Up to the room of a foreign businessman taking her through night into morning.
Everyone in town was making money.
Billboards shouted, “Making Money in China is Glorious!”
She carefully folded hard earned hard currency into her black purse after a long hot shower and took the elevator down. Gliding through a revolving glass and brass door, she passed a deserted dark empty Japanese restaurant and negotiated gray stained industrial steps to Nanjing Xi Lu.
One million serious adults in blue industrial clothing practiced Tai Chi with controlled balanced concentration.
Every methodical movement had meaning.
Dawn's collective mist breath crashed around her well worn heels skipping over cracked stones through shadows.
Metta.
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