Poonam

A READING:

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The Natural Restingplace of Suchness

 

Come, rest with me for a while. There is such simplicity here where we are at. 

Easy. At ease. 

We are At Ease: the natural restingplace of suchness. It is a destination that needs no arrival. 

We can always find this place called At Ease: no maps, no explanations, no coming or going. 

We are undeniably here. We belong.  

 

What’s the fuss about? Can you sense it in your body? It is possible to sense anything that is moving. Fuss always moves. 

It is also possible to sense anything that is still. 

It is also possible to sense how it feels to feel nothing at all. That can be sensed in a thousand different ways. 

 

Anything can be observed from a point of observation. It is easy. It is a knack. You may have to practice a little, perhaps, just as we did when we learned how to walk. Was there a ”how to walk” when you knew you had to get up on your feet and go? Did you have a manual of ”this is how to walk”? Did anybody have to show you how to put one foot in front of the other? 

 

Has anyone taught you how to sleep? Or how to eat? Breathe? Or is this just natural? Why is it so?

 

Was there ever a single moment of this life when you were not aware? Aware of something. Anything. Aware of not being aware is also awareness. Even the times when you felt absent you were undeniably present. We are here. Always here. We may observe and become aware of what we are observing or we may not be aware - and then somehow we are also aware of that.

 

Don’t you agree that there is always stillness in movement? And silence in sound? Space between objects? Space within, also. Without the natural resting place of suchness none of it could be possible.

 

We are the container of life happening here and now. How is that for you? 

 

Life is not a noun, it is a verb. It is Life-ing. It is a happening, a movement. It rests in stillness, no? Like the hub of the turning weel. Otherwise there would be no way of finding out what a movement is. But we know movement. Just as we know how to walk. Or sleep, eat, breathe.

 

How delightful is that!

 

 

Bodytalk.

 

Without the earth we are nothing. Our bodies are Earth moving, quite literary: the Earth with eyes, the Earth with ears, taste, sense, blood, bones. Moving Earth. A vessel for life. We are made up of earth, yet we so often see ourselves as separate. 

 

The beauty of hands! I can watch my hand: see and sense the creases in the skin, the tone, the blood vessels meandering across the back of the hand. How intelligently attached to the palm is the thumb! When we make a fist the hand becomes hard, it can even be used to hurt somebody. When it is soft it can caress or gently touch cheeks and temples. Have you noticed: it feels totally different within yourself if the hand is held with the palm facing downwards or upwards? The gestures have different meanings. Facing down my hands say: easy, take it soft, be calm. If I hold them open facing up they say ”welcome”; they may even become the gentle landing place for birds. 

 

Did you ever think about how impossible it is to feed a bird when we try to hold on to it? A bird can only feel safe when we offer it seeds from an open hand, with no intention of catching it or clenching its feet in our grip. The bird is in touch with its inner knowing so it flies off instantly if we move with that intention. I like to think it is a good way to receive life, like feeding a bird.

 

I learn a lot from my hands.

 

I have heard that the hands bud from the same cells as the heart when we are in our mothers womb. An elongation of the Heart. The touching, caring Heart! Heart energy in our arms reaching out, into our hands caring for life.

 

So many parts, this body! My feet, always at the bottom, doing service. Carrying my bones, muscles and all the rest to different places I wish to go. These bones of the foot, so well constructed, connecting to the toes that helps me stay balanced. Such intelligence! Who is producing this intelligence? Not me, that is for sure. It happens on its own. A happening.

 

My belly dissolves food, transforms ”this” to ”that” and in the process I have the advantage of being in the middle as a receiver of goodness. All that I eat becomes ”me” in some form or another. All the cells are continually being exchanged and replaced by new ones stemming from whatever nourishment that came into my mouth. What I eat becomes ”me”. What is not needed is coming out in the other end. What a mystery! 

 

Sensitivity is only possible through this vehicle, this body that carries me. We are such sensitive beings. Sometimes I wonder if we are so sensitive that we have felt some sort of need to defend ourselves from ourselves, from our own sensitivity, as if sensitivity is the most threatening thing in the world! But sensitivity is good, it is our inner compass, our guide, Guru, Master, Heart. Unless we deeply feel ourselves, and sense others though this incredible delicate possibility, how will we ever realize we are truly human?

 

Our bodies! Still alive even if we are in a coma. We are clearly not needed for our bodies to stay alive. 

So who are we? What are we? Not the body, not the thoughts, not the feelings. But it can all be felt in the body, this temple we inhabit. It makes me visible. You can see me! 

 

 

The space we inhabit

 

I spent a lot of time in silence in the mountains and got in touch with spaces: the space we have; the reality of life in our bodies. The spaciousness in it when totally experienced, the hub of the wheel, the space between things, the emptiness of form. The holding space. The generosity of existence that just allows us to somehow take place. Nothing can prevent our bodies from filling up a certain space, the space that is needed for us to be seen. But who or what is it that is seen really? Some people feel they take up too much space. Or too little. How could this be possible: is there a way one can take up less or more space, here and now? 

 

Have you ever seen a bird creating a conflict about the space it takes? Can you imagine a turtle wanting to be different? 

 

How is it that a rabbit recognizes another rabbit when none of them has seen their own image in a mirror? If humans did not have access to mirrors; would we not recognize another human? Of course we would! But perhaps we would be less confused about ourselves and our appearance. Without mirrors, would we be more relaxed, at ease? More content? Would we feel ourselves more profoundly if we didn’t question the space we fill: our natural existence? No animals are vain. No tree is discontent with its tree-ness (at least I have never met one that was!). No games are needed when one is fulfilled within ones own space. There is a natural space for everyone of us. 

 

Is it possible to make ”space” visible? It is our invisible friend. It is enough for us all, holding us, allowing us to be.

 

The space of being. The natural resting place of suchness! 

 

 

Speed

 

I was late for work and was biking very fast down a small slope going into a tunnel under a road. Suddenly, from nowhere, a flash of insight: there is a place in me where I am not moving, I am actually totally still! 

 

This outer speed is all an image, a happening going on around me, but I am untouched. I am stillness. There is no way of knowing what is moving around me, or in me, without this perfect stillness. 

We all have it. We just forget it, but since this moment it has always been my companion.  

 

 

Snakes

 

I don’t know if my fear of snakes was inbuilt or taught. My summer paradise in the archipelago was rife with snakes and I was told that if I saw one I had to keep completely still, as frozen, since the snake reacts to vibrations. At a very tender age I learned to keep watch in every crevice and under every rock for snakes, a hightend sense of awareness became inbuilt in me and kicked in as soon as I put my foot on the island. It was an automatic fear-driven mechanism. If I spotted a snake I froze in fear, in mid-motion and stood absolutely still, no matter what, until the snake disappeared. 

 

Many snakes lost their heads by the hand of the adult men on this summer island. Shovels or axes were used to decapitate them. I learned that snakes also have pink flesh and that they also fight for their lives when threatened. Life is the same for snakes as for humans. We all bleed, we all wish to live.

 

For many years my fear of snakes remained. I thought it was a part of me that was supposed to be there. Until it wasn’t anymore, after several years of working on myself, my past, my issues. 

 

Meditation became the friend I really trusted.  

 

Snakes had carried fear that sprung from completely different sources in my life, the snakes had nothing to do with it at all. But fear has to go somewhere when you can’t carry it by yourself and when, for different reasons, it can’t be adressed at the real source someone else has to keep it. 

 

A few years ago I was taking part in a retreat in Norway and we went for a long walk in silence in the beautiful nature. I was walking by myself when a snake crawled up on the path just in front of my feet. I heard myself think: ”Hello, little snake!”. And suddenly I realized I was not afraid anymore! The snakes were free, free of ”me”! 

 

A snake takes up a certain space, it is for this animal to use for as long as it lives. The space held for snakes is natural. Snakes are not evil, they are just snakes, taking up the snake-space that is their birthright. They, too, are resting within all that is.

 

 

We made it.

 

So many predecessors! Have you ever thought about how we came to be here, I mean really thought about it? 

 

Did you ever reflect on all the creatures that made it all possible? 

 

How the first simple forms of life developed and the most creative ones survived, creative as in how to survive in their specific environment. How life aquatic got complemented by life on land and how some little creature developed legs or wings to evolve, how many died in the process but some survived. How earthquakes and landslides, floods and storms, lava, ice and fire made a natural selection of who continued to spread their genes. How furry creatures started giving birth to offspring not in an egg but now the egg developed inside the females so the young ones would not be exposed to danger. Mammals evolved. But many still died for different reasons, vulnerable as all living things are. 

 

”Lucy” and her relatives began looking like humans and those genes are most likely in most of us. Perhaps their lifespan was 15-20-25 years, I don’t know, but they did not have penicillin or hospitals and died much younger than we do now. Dangers were all around, some survived, some did not. But their offspring were vital enough to keep the chain unbroken, so by and by humans evolved. 

 

Humans started using tools. Exploring, wandering, spreading. Claiming space. Making things ”ours”. The amount of conflict and hostility between us is of a magnitude that is mind-blowing: all the wars, the unending fight for ”that which should be mine but is yours”, the slandering, the killing, the murdering. 

 

The famines, the plagues… the natural disasters.

 

But somehow every single one of the ones needed for precisely you to be here survived! Isn’t this totally crazy if we let it in: how many components that made this one breath possible? 

 

I find myself in a dizzy happy thankful partymode when I really take it in. 

 

I mean; really!!!

 

Words turn into a joke when I look for one to describe the sense of wonder and miracle. 

 

We are totally fucking alive this very minute! 

 

 

So unbelievably close

 

It is closer than your breath, this resting place. The Home of Homes. The funny thing is that I have to remove myself from there in order to write or talk about it. See: it is already built in in the words I need to write: ”…write or talk ABOUT it”. I have to say ”about”. It is not it. It can’t ever be. Understand: anything you can observe is not you. Whatever it is, it may be your hand, your hair, your possessions, your thoughts, your experience… whatever you can observe is never ”you”. We can’t observe ourselves because we are already that, un-observable. Inescapable. Yet we try so hard to become that what we are not. 

 

Don’t look; see.

Don´t listen; hear.

Don’t feel; perceive.

 

Your eyes are not to look with but to see through.

Your ears not to listen with but to hear through.

Your senses lead you astray unless you live them.

Awareness resides under the soles of your feet.

 

The effort, the trying, is what creates the seeker. But you are already here, no need to do anything. How can anyone possibly seek themselves? 

 

Rest, dear. 

Take a pause from all the doing and return to the Natural Restingplace of Suchness. 

You never left.