What if an astigmatic forgets to bring her glasses to meditation? Well, she cannot focus properly.
This is how it starts. In the middle of practice, at the beginning of a sitting session, towards the end of the day. A humid Thursday afternoon, on the last day of July. In a meditation hall in a minor capital. The sitting has started, the bell has been sounded. Time for here and now. The very first syllables of the first text have been intoned and she realizes her glasses are out there, left in the changing room. Not on her nose, now sunk deep into the tiny booklet of texts to be recited. She knows no graceful way to leave the room, so there she stands, sitting kneeling on the mat on the whitewashed floor. SAN ZEN KON (no, wait!) PO YA NAN (wrong again) TE OM JO JA (there, these are the exact…) KAN ZE ON BO SA. All blurry, the clusters of letters dance out of line on the page and escape, no longer kept together. Not clear at all, permanently impermanent and fluctuating.
This is how a protracted visit to your optician must be feeling like. You are trying new glasses and you are (kindly) asked to (kindly) read the first, second, third row of letters. Now magnify that ten times.
This is when it dawns on her, it is also the first time she is reciting that particular and flowery text. In a dimly lit room, without glasses. Upbeat tempo, row after row. Fifth, sixth, seventh row, syllable after syllable, first one page, and then another, and another, this arduous chapter does not cease. Ene due rike fake torba borba ósme smake deus meus kosmateus i morele box. Like a combination of acuity chart and counting rhyme, only now in Sino-Japanese and she cannot really leave the room.
“O thou whose eyes are clear, whose eyes are kind, distinguished by wisdom and knowledge…” She curses her eyes and proceeds with deciphering the syllables, one after another. One, two, three, four…
kaledo-art
turnnoffyourmind
blakekathryn