One of the chief insights of Tibetan Buddhism is the realization that even through spacious, transparent, sky-like awareness - "emptiness," "shunyata" - is the fundamental reality of the cosmos, that spaciousness magically begins to shimmer as form. Here, each form that we encounter in life is like a different color of the rainbow appearing and shimmering in the midst of spacious awareness. Unlike a physical rainbow, however, there is no "Sun" to produce the light. How, we might ask, can rainbow colors appear within empty space without any sun? That, of course, is the great mystery and magic of life.
A theistic perspective can add intrigue and personality to this kind of vision. For it says that there is indeed a Sun - God, the Great Beyond - whose boundless Love is the source of the rainbow colors shimmering as form. But because of God's self-emptying bliss, the manifestation of that Sun - surprise! - has disappeared for all eternity. And yet - and here is the intrigue of it all - the rainbow colors of divine love manifesting themselves as innumerable forms somehow appear ANYWAY!
Photo: Bryce Canyon National Park, UT; August 31, 2012
Thank you Stephen. I am just setting up my new laptop, opened today. While installing and setting up Firefox to which I am ingrained I installed Feedly, which conveniently displays all google reader feeds. As always your stunning photos and poignant quotes drew me in and I spent the next hour browsing your latest posts. I now have this one as desktop background on my new laptop opened today. Many thanks.
ReplyDeleteJames, thanks for the positive feedback. I'm glad you find the photo-quotes inspiring and meaningful. That moment with the rainbow at Bryce Canyon was truly a gift. Two hours later, there was a huge thunderstorm!
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