Tinge on the Fringe

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation. Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. - Jean Arp in the Zen Calendar (September 4, 2007).

Day 22. Three completed weeks of blogging. Forty-nine left to go (but who's counting . . . )

I chose the above quote for tonight's blog because when I was sitting meditation yesterday, the silence was astounding. I have never before listened so intently to nothing. I live in a city, with barking dogs fenced in the three yards surrounding mine - not far from train tracks and a block from a high school. It is never remotely quiet, much less silent. I felt deeply grateful while sitting last night - for the silence itself and for mindfully bearing witness to it.

I cherish silence. I thrive in it. I have one of those exquisitely wired nervous systems that registers all sensory input a little too intensely. So the lack of stimulation that makes most people anxious is a welcomed respite for me. A sensory deprivation tank is my idea of paradise. Thus, I sit. And was graced with several minutes of utter silence.

Perhaps the quiet was conducive to a deeper state of meditation. Or maybe the Monkeys were just taking a break. Whatever the explanation, I was able to still my mind to an unprecedented degree last night. No enlightenment, no nirvana, and my mind and body stuck around, but I did have a novel experience. That sensation I briefly described in an earlier blog -- the one of everything conscious sort of drifting to the fringes of my mind -- returned. And in the emptiness, there was this tinge of blueness. It wasn't so much like "seeing" the color of blue, it felt like "being" blue. And I don't mean depressed. I mean being the color blue. Now, those of you who associate this with some weird drug trip or something (oh, wait -- there is no "you" -- I am currently an unread blog -- Cool!) Anyway, if this sounds like some externally-induced alternative state, I am simply describing what I experienced. It didn't last long, and it didn't seem to prompt any particularly strong emotion in me. I guess I just kind of watched it from afar. Had some incomplete recollections of friends who also meditate talking about the significance of the color blue. Interestingly, on this night I forgot to take my phone of its chronic state of "vibrate," so the timer didn't sound at the end of 20 minutes. At 29 minutes, my feet were entirely asleep beneath my knees, and I had a sense of having been in meditation a really long time. Not the same as drifting off under a lotus for seven years, but nine Monkeyless minutes nonetheless.

I think the most important aspect of the Blue Tinge on the fringe of my consciousness was the lack of need to analyze it -- even now, while I'm writing and deeply submerged in my thinking brain. I'm sure that I will write more about the experience, but for now, I think I will just Sit with it.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc