Blank Space

Joy

Taylor Swift sings about it but it does not exist.

At least not in the periphery of our minds.

We close our eyes and stem the tide but much as we try, images will begin to crowd our consciousness. Light filters in, a faint filtering of a prism, like waves breaking over mounds of hewn rock, and then a sound or two – voices that seem to belong to us but not – edging each other out until one or two take center stage and we are caught up in a story, much like a spider in its web.

But if the sages are right, if those enlightened beings are to be believed, we need to attain this blank space – this tabula rasa – from time to time to time. For inner peace.

But what is inner peace? What is its approximation? Is it a piercing brightness filling our core with a warmth that does not scald? Is it the rustling of leaves when none are in fact present, or just a soft undulating of the world? Is it the centered-ness of our being, not feeling anything at the moment, not hot or cold or tired, or good or bad? Just feeling. Blood flowing swiftly, an awareness but without any thoughts, being certain with who and what we are. A washing away of sins, a forgiveness of oneself without being aware of each and every particular transgression, a connection to everything – the earth, the wind, the sky the universe – all in the burst of a second, a minute, minutes.  A silencing of the rumble, the constant tumble, the whirling of the unstoppable mind, a consciousness that is STILL, for once a spectator, unaffected, unafraid, powerful. Past and present and future do not exist but ALL exist – at the same time, at the same moment.

But if they are right and we have to find this blank space – then how? Because maybe it exists, maybe it does not; maybe there is no void and no fullness.

Just the joy of being.

“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”

       ― Thích Nhất Hạnh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life