Words&Dirt

“This is indeed a profoundly lonely Cosmos. In it, the loneliness of this mountaintop moonrise takes on depths beyond the usual sense of being a self isolated from others, for I am most essentially an emptiness that is separate from all that I typically think of as my identity. It is loneliness in this sense that makes friendship so powerful for the ancients; but at the same time, that emptiness opens a new possibility for friendship. As Absence, empty mind attends to the ten thousand things with mirrorlike clarity, making the act of perception a spiritual act: empty mind mirroring the world, leaving its ten thousand things utterly simple, utterly themselves, and utterly sufficient. In that perceptual act, identity becomes whatever sight fills eye and mind, that mirrored opening of consciousness. This may sound like mysticism, but it seems much closer to observational science. In any case, it was common for friends to sip wine together and watch the moon rise, for example, or mountain peaks among clouds, or plum blossoms in evening light. In this, they were doing nothing less than sharing identity.”

––Hunger Mountain: A Field Guide to Mind and Landscape, by David Hinton, pg. 19