absorption
 

Crimson light through pine shadows.
Setting sun settling in the ocean.
Night follows the setting sun.
Day follows the fleeing moon.

>br>


 

All too often, we tend to think of absorption as a static thing: Water is absorbed into a sponge, and there it stays.  But true absorption is a total involvement in the evolution of life without hesitation or contradiction.  In nature there is no alienation.  Everything belongs.

Only human beings hold ourselves aloof from this process.  We have our civilizations, our personal plans, our own petty emotions.  We divorce ourselves from process, even as we yearn for love, companionship, understanding, and communion.  We constantly defeat ourselves by questioning, asserting ourselves at the wrong times, or letting hatred and pride cloud our perceptions.  Our alienation is self-generated.

In the meantime, all of nature continues its constant flow.  We need to let ourselves go, enter freely into the process of nature, and become absorbed in it.  If we integrate ourselves with that process, we will find success.  Then the sequence of things will be as evident as the coming of the sun and the moon, and everything will be as it should be.
 
 

absorption
365 Tao
Deng Ming-Dao
Daily Meditations
 

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Album of Ten Leaves of Flower and Landscapes
Yun Shou-p'ing
China
1676
album: ink and color on paper

t: Cheng-shu
h: Nan-t'ien, Yün-shi wai-shih, Pai-yün wai-shih, Tung-yüan ts'ao-i

 In this album Yün uses a technique known as the "boneless" (mogu) to depict the flowers, leaves, and stalks. This method uses shading and ink and color  gradations to describe the plant without outline. It was a technique that can trace its roots to the eleventh-century painter Hsü Ch'ung-ssu. Other artists of the early Ming were also using this technique, but in Yün's hands it creates an  extremely airy and light appearance, almost as if the plants were floating in space.
 

  bampfa@uclink.berkeley.edu