With everyone else, I sometimes seem to live mainly in a seen world. All that is external is our focus and object of attention. I suppose it is a matter of survival. We need to pay attention to the seen world to survive, but there is so much more. I want to experience more of the internal world. Not just my own, but the internal, unseen aspect of everyone and everything around me. I want to know and experience what is happening inside.
What is it like to be a tree? What is happening inside all those people who walk past me as I hurry down Nicollet Avenue.? What enjoyment does a rock experience in its stability ? I speak of actions and movements, but I want to know more of what is happening inside everyone around me.
It is easier and more familiar to talk of falling down than what it feels like to lose control and stability. I am told of members of my Sangha being ordained, of the actions they are taking, what they are doing. But what is the interior change taking place in them as they go through those seen actions.?
Like most, I seem to have become so habituated to focus on the external and we have lost touch or ignore what is taking place inside. Maybe that is because there is actually little taking place inside, we have become so adept at the external, seen aspect of everything including ourselves. All is done externally, or at least mostly externally, and very little internally. We live in a seen world, and so much possiblity lies in the vast unseen.
Weddings are especially such an expression of that sad divide. So much energy and attention is placed on the external trappings that little seems to be seen or felt on the inside. The same happens as we become absorbed in the ritual and actions, the words and the motions we encounter in my Sangha. Without deliberate attention, we begin to lose touch with what we are actually experiencing or capable of experiencing. Without practice, we do not have the skills of describing what is happening inside, in our unseen world. Sometimes there is little going on internally because we are so adept at focusing on what is external.
My morning walks through my garden can be no different. There are moments that I can truly focus on what I am experiencing and what it is like to be a plant in my garden. There are moments when I can focus on what it is like to be this plant and that plant. These are the monents when I am aware of the inner life that I have and am part of. For a few moments I am able to stroll joyfully in an unseen world. In those moments, my inner world expands without limits.