meditating buddhaA lovely, unpublishable [not pictured], pen and ink depiction of the Buddha meditating by an undisturbed pool of water rendered by my love Gail Evans speaks deeply to me. The figure sits quietly by a pool of still water that reflects his image to the viewer. One at first wonders if the buddha is exhibiting a cliche, navel gazing, as is commonly expressed. On closer inspection, however, one discovers that he is not narcissistically fixed on the reflection of self, but peering beyond the moment of apparent reality into the pool of pure consciousness itself.

As I regularly consider my own inner pool, it seems that, at times, consciousness is all there is, that there is no other reality. Other times, it seems that even consciousness itself is a construct to appease a simple mind that can only generalize from evidential flickers across my screen. Not to construct a reality from these flicks is to remain between the frames of life’s animating flow or to freeze on one frame as though it were all that needed to be seen.

In these times of clarity, I am a bit unnerved by the thought that reality is but my own construct, my reality and that of no other. I can see, however, that the grand designer, must have wanted it that way by making it essential for us to share views, to network, and to work together in order that a fuller reality may birth among us.