This is jade…
Wednesday around 2 a.m. the moonlight through jade’s window was brilliant – even though it was only a quarter moon.
Passing by in the dark, what I first noticed was her shadow. At first it didn’t make sense – how could that be I wondered – it’s not a full moon tonight.
The moon was high enough in the sky that I had to get right up to the window next to jade and look upward. I looked back over my shoulder to be sure it really was jade’s shadow that I’d seen. Despite the proof, I still wasn’t sure.
Finished with trying to be logical, smiling, I asked jade if her shadow in the moon also brought her joy.
“Why else would I have wanted to show you this?” Ehipassiko had been her call to me from her secret place.*
“…ehipassiko, which is an adjective formed from “come” and “see.”
… Some caution is, however, in order lest one think this means that we should trust our own experience above all. In fact, for the Buddha the typical “uninstructed worldling” is actually astonishingly deluded and the Dharma quite “against the stream” from his perspective. We get hopelessly confused in trying to see or interpret our own experience. For this reason the Buddha in the famous but often misquoted Kalama Sutta warns us not to base one’s understanding on one’s own thinking:
“… don’t go … by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability …”
http://bhikkhucintita.wordpress.com/2013/09/06/growing-the-dharma-refuge-in-dharma-and-sangha/
With mettā, and thanks to Jeanne for your inspiration.
* http://garthstevenson.com/music
