Woods Elliott, 22nd February 2010
The seeker of enlightenment, like the fisherman, needs a calm readiness without impatience, and foremost, a willingness to be still and wait a good long time, as if for a bite, as long as a fish might hesitate before feeling safe enough to approach the bait.
It’s also like stalking. Think how long the heron can wait, still as a stick, for just the right moment to seize upon the fish.
Or like surfing. You have to spend a lot of idle time out there, amongst the mounting waves and breakers, needing to be in just the right spot to take advantage of the very occasional big and perfect wave that comes along. You can’t surf a perfect wave if you’re not sitting on the board and intent on what the sea’s developing.
As the awakened spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle puts it: we need to learn how to become more fully “present” with the stillness of this world.
The sages would agree you can’t rush forth towards enlightenment like a drunken fool nor wailing two year old. You have to wait and concentrate on waiting, very quietly, in utter stillness, wait with all your grace like a stalking heron, wait through all the hardship and pains of waiting, and when you get so good at it, it no longer even matters if the waiting ends, or better still, the waiting becomes joyful for its own sake, then and only then, when there’s no longer desire and craving, when the seeker no longer seeks..truth will be granted, what is sought will be found, and all the lights will come on in the darkness, the unknown will be known, and all the mysteries will be unveiled.
As you can see, this is well worth waiting for.
Iceberg
1.
I could draw poetry out of silence
with the patience of a fisherwoman
I have cut my circle in the ice
and wait.
2.
I want to find the courage to dive deep
beyond conception
to hammer diamonds
from the glassy wall
suck hard at meaning
to make transparent,
the opaque.
I want to trace with burning fingers
the unique and perfect pattern
of each frost flower
to wear a skin so thin
my blood’s heat will melt
the edge of ice
and make the inert flow.
3.
I want to write poetry with muscle
words that can’t be
pummelled into submission
but swagger
seeking across a page.
I want a new vocabulary for living
a grammar for contradictions
where mind and body rhyme
and my heart’s beat
sounds
in the sea.
Rose Diamond
