Tranquil Understanding

I remember the time when Derek, my older brother, told me about his bus ride home from the University of Winnipeg. "Darryl, let me tell you about my bus ride!" Derek said enthusiastically and placidly, in a tone that kind of straddled the line between calm detachment and glorious excitement. I expected a story about carnage and mayhem on the bus; something about ornery terrorists taking over the bus, or least something about the driver turning into a madman behind the wheel. But I got nothing of the kind. Instead, Derek told me about the meditative state he got into while enduring the mundane with the rest of the transit flock. He said he entered into a state of such immense peace, an inner grove of profound understanding. He also said language couldn't possibly describe it---"entered" and "state" were merely empty words to him. It was all about his presence at that moment anyways. He didn't have to explain it. I could just tell he experienced something few of us ever glimpse. I was frankly jealous. I said to myself: "Why can't I enter into a tranquil state of mind?" But I was certainly glad that Derek found some sort of solace within himself. One of us had to experience IT.

This past weekend I entered into, or unveiled, that inner tranquility that is always the blossoming, diamond-esque consciousness of the immutable present. I was in a taxi with my brother. I was looking out the window. Just witnessing. Just watching thoughts float by. I stopped caring what the thoughts were about. I said to myself: "All thoughts are valid, and have a place in my awareness, and they're spontaneously created, and they spontaneously die." When the taxi came to a halt, I was beyond calm. I perceived myself, my interior self, to be nothing but an empty witness. I was like a stoic tree that desired nothing but my own "treeness". The exterior world, on the other hand, was vibrating with such life and such beauty. The taxi was waiting at a red light, but it still moved. And this movement wasn't the rumbling of the engine either. The vibrating was neither imperceptible nor perceptible. It went beyond all the rules of language, because the energy was too slippery and subtle to be caught by linguistic concepts and constructs. When the taxi moved again and carried Derek and I to our destination, I snapped back into Darryl again. For the rest of the ride I sat on the apex of one huge question mark.

Merry Christmas!