shine on, you crazy diamond
Well being, peace and happiness are hidden in plain sight, in the ever-present flow of experience experiencing itself, always right here and right now.
I recently completed an intensive, 30 day silent meditation retreat in California following a very strict Burmese Buddhist lineage, with formal sessions totaling seventeen and a half hours per day.
When people ask “how was it?” I struggle to come up with an answer that seems to satisfy the person asking. “The water pressure was excellent” feels more genuine than any of the other responses I’ve come up with.
Flippant, you say? Yeah, maybe, but I’m good with that. Would I do it again? Absolutely!
As I get older, and meditate more intensively, I’m just blown away how every tiny little piece of what’s happening in this moment right now is an absolute miracle; this tapping of this keyboard and this upcoming sip of tea- ahhh.
To say my time in retreat was somehow more powerful or more special than this moment right now really misses the mark.
So why did I go there, if the water pressure in this bathroom here is just as excellent?
Many of us are attracted to meditation to get over something, like anxiety, or to explore altered states for all sorts of reasons. We all have all manner of issues that at times can seem really heavy and serious, unbearable even.
But when I take a close look, whatever shows up in awareness is always dissolving and vanishing, constantly shape-shifting like some Marvel character.
When I try to hold on to something to seemingly deal with it, it feels like I’m trying to pin a tail on a space donkey.
The historical Buddha appears to never tire of emphasizing that no-things ever actually form long enough to even be impermanent.
Yet, here we are, often feeling stuck. But stuck in what?
It’s precisely because nothing survives even for an instant, when we really look with focused awareness, that we’re never actually ever stuck. No matter how complicated and difficult our circumstance feels, it’s always just this.
I love Pink Floyd’s song from their 1975 album “Wish You Were Here” – Shine On You Crazy Diamond. No matter how complex and difficult, it’s always just this crazy diamond of reality as it is right now, shining a light that seems solid and real …
but is actually more like our beautiful Hawaiian rainbows, never staying the same, even if we gaze at it a second later.
What did I come away with from my long, often tedious hours of silent meditation?
Well, since you asked, it’s that phenomenal well being, peace and happiness are not the product of meditative huffing and puffing, but are always just right here, shining like a crazy diamond in plain sight, in the ever-present flow of experience experiencing itself, always right here and right now.
and that a good long, hard meditation retreat was just the thing to re-mind me of this incredibly beautiful state of affairs.
How wonderful, how marvelous!
Shine on you crazy diamond.
