Shadow Dance

Shadow and light mingle; they dance together on the table in front of me. Sun, filtered through maple leaves, has found its way through the kitchen window and produced a display on the veined quartz surface. I forget my breakfast, and my mind relaxes in the ungraspable flutter of light and dark. I feel happiness rippling from my toes to the top of my head. I don’t know why I am so tickled. Something about witnessing little things, subtle impressions that cut through the clouds of usual thoughts. Meditation without meditating?

I think about the text called Buddhahood Without Meditation, Nang Jang, or Refining One’s Perception. This is Dudjom Lingpa’s visionary account of awakening, and it points out the trap of meditating to attain some imagined state of awareness. It explores the practice of, trekchöd, “cutting through” ordinary conceptuality of phenomena. I wonder if this ungraspable fluttering display is what he is describing. The shadow play on the table has no true existence. I cannot take hold of it. And it is already gone…