Secret Passages
I Ching Meditation Mindfulness Poetry Ecology Economy Change Taoism Philosophy Psychology
The allure of a mountain will always hold me. From my childhood - just out from the yard - I would watch them at the distance one province away. Their presence in story, poetry, and more recently to me in classic Chinese landscape painting, fixes my attention, sending my mind climbing into them. Sometimes they appear, as before, somewhat like a wall out at a distance; but unlike the walls within our human cultures, the mountain is ever inviting. A frontier.
I'm happy to say I live amongst them now - my true heart-of-hearts, the Interior - yet I am still as easily transported to the foreign mountainside reveries depicted in Chinese artwork: the instant allure and the subsequent calm, the arising inquisitiveness, and the answers, pouring out from the mountainsides and into the air, dribbling down so casually to a lakeside that tremendous sensation of place. It seems I cannot help it. Perhaps it is just the sheer weight and size of a thing, but this timelessness, this direct assurance which comes instantly to my mind seems to issue from the mountain itself. Simply: I have been enamoured of both the mountains and the Chinese classics for years.
Many movements in Western art are held somewhere amongst these articulating branches, suspended reverently or irreverently in those clouds, arresting me. There, I find my own thoughts inhabiting the sparsely-peopled thatched huts, beside the hidden water gardens, gazing ever-ward the lilies, or from atop perched lookouts studying the seasons to a stream-bed.
I had read somewhere along the way in one of professor Cleary's books that "... the Mountain is where you lose the self," and in his many works, page by page, I scaled several. But it is his course of study through the I Ching which holds me to this day. I have found no more thorough retreat, and no avenue of study with such thorough vastness: it holds my attention poetically and yet mathematically; scientifically and yet spiritually; personally yet societally; interpersonally, and yet also in total solitude. And even when steeped into such delicious solitudes I feel anything but alone: I Ching points to that place of mind where one life is only a husk, and all life, moving, is of that slow and proper yearning shared similar by seed and sun; the full moon understood as ash and light reflected. I Ching is for me our mind. Or a soul if you prefer. It follows then that I Ching is for me the soul seen, a map of our intrinsic commons: the psyche as a fact, visible and complete.
... I think that developing a meditation practice is radical. In all senses of the word. And today, I think this practice is needed. More than anything our species needs better decision making ability. We need guidance through a labyrinth whose walls are generally built by emotionality alone: by an always war, by scarcity thinking, by reality TV, by the fear of separation, agism, and by experiencing an inherently tenuous self-esteem foremost through the acquisition of social status. To experience this guidance unto our better decisions, we need to first witness our current, base contentions, that we may then better understand them, diffuse them, and allow any individual to contribute an honest and creative best to what I see as a fractured and ailing society.
...I know too well what the hand-that-feeds-you does when you bite it. Yet it still seems that far too many find instead their death-beds with only regret to keep them company; obliged to an un-finishing script, wanting so badly to know where the time actually went. I see us choosing fear...
... I would much rather go by wonder. I would much rather know death. As it is happening. I would like to see its door and choose when I walk through it. I would much rather look into this fact of my life with a calm confidence, accepting of my seasons and how I have seasoned them. I would look into that seeming blackness daily taking comfort by the sparkling darkness. I do not wish for pain of course, yet even inside pain are the stars born, and I aim toward such concentration. I aim my life toward that insight. Until I know: I cannot know. And so I live by invitation.
I hope you find the intent of these gardens before you, such: that by a radiant and lengthening calm, your life too will experience this echo. That the fullest breath comes along as through a valley, a bronchial movement ever-ward, brushing up upon the mountainside, this tide of an always retreating shoreline, full and filled.
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: Introduction
: Opening the Door
: Eco-Theology
"Meditation is simply the most relevent skill you can learn for Today."
:the Questions, the Coins
the Hexagrams
This is the best part about I Ching. Truly. It may sometimes also be the hardest part, but it usually contains the greatest degree of excitement like setting out upon an early morning hike. It is fresh air and anticipation from your psyche.
Finding the words to your question involves being still, and listening. It is almost an exercise in meditation itself really, in that you have the opportunity to give shape to something in your mind which has been there speaking to you anyway. For some, unasked questions speak for us whether we want them to or not.
The Question, comes out of that nagging sensation – that constant background story – which gives meaning to all your actions. It is not necessarily a negative thing, or problematic, but I use the word 'nag' to reflect a sensation of constancy. Arising within the story of You, The Question, is the thing which is motivating you – right now – and I Ching grants you the opportunity to befriend and sift through all of its nuances.
: from the Garden...
A donation from every sale will go to the Johnson's Landing community.
© Philip W. Sarsons All rights reserved except where
otherwise noted. {dragonfly photo: Janet MacIntyre, Rossland BC}