I've just posted a very neat piece in my blog by a Buddhist teacher on
the subject of "noticing space." Included in the teaching is this gem:
"Space is something that we tend not to notice, because
it doesn't grasp our attention, does it? It is not like a beautiful
flower something really beautiful, or something really horrible -- which
pulls your attention right to it. You can be completely mesmerized in an
instant by something exciting, fascinating, horrible or terrible; but
you can't do that with space, can you? To notice space you have to calm
down -- you have to contemplate it.
This is because spaciousness is not extreme, it has no
extreme qualities. It is just spacious, whereas flowers can be extremely
beautiful, with beautiful bright reds and oranges and purples, beautiful
shapes -- extremely beautiful shapes -- that are just so dazzling to our
minds. Our something else can be really ugly and disgusting.
But space is not dazzling, it is not disgusting, and yet
without space there would not be anything else; we couldn't see. If you
had just this room, and filled it up with things so it became solid, or
filled it up with cement -- a big cement block -- there'd be no space
left in this room. Then, of course, you couldn't have beautiful flowers
or anything else; it would just be a big block. It would be useless,
wouldn't it? So we need both; we need to appreciate the form and the
space, because they are the perfect couple, the true marriage, perfect
harmony -- space and form. We contemplate this, we reflect, and from
this comes wisdom. We know how things are, rather than always trying to
create things the way we might want them to be."
References and a link to the full piece can be found at
http://snurl.com/1r4
Cheers,
Chris
---
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Bowen Island, BC, Canada
http://www.chriscorrigan.com
ch...@chriscorrigan.com
(604) 947-9236
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