Another View
Yesterday I wrote about the “Now I See” practice I’ve been doing and I posted the last journal entry I wrote, after viewing Guanyin (for the sixth time.) Just to give you an idea of how the seeing can change, here’s the entries I wrote after the fourth viewing:
Now I see the cracks and splits in the wood. One vertical, right through the center of his/her breast. A shallower one, just below. There’s a large crack in the the drapery along the right arm. This one is deep and goes almost all the way through. Maybe entirely all the way though. And there’s another one, further down on her gown. A crack that breaks like a wound into her arm. I see the mottled effect of the whitewash fading, or of having been scrubbed away. And beneath, the tanned-flesh color of wood.
I see the graceful balance of the hand — the fingers of the hand — extended but relaxed. And the resting of the arm, at the elbow, on the knee. I see..even feel…the balance, the equilibrium of tension and weight, the pull of gravity, and heaviness of muscle on bone. I see the coming to rest of forces in the thigh and the arm, the pelvis open, the weight being born by the opposite arm. Born and supported by the ground below.
I see the suggestion of an opening in the eye, an eye that sees, from the corner of the lower lid. It is as if there is an awareness, but without focus. A soft seeing. Yet alert. I feel seen. But not watched.
I see the ring of folds on her neck. The plump softness of the wood-made-flesh. And now I see her earlobe…which is huge! A strand of greyed and green-gold hair falls/wraps across-and-around that surprising pendant, which is thicker and fuller than a thumb.
I see the complicated headdress she wears. Carved flowers and scrolls. Leaves. Buds. Stylized forms of nature suggesting growth and movement. In the center of the headdress–it’s a crown perhaps–there’s a flame, knotted, knob-like….the size to fit in the palm of the hand, and around the flame, a frame, flame-shaped, like a torch that is glowing, halo-ed.
And behind the crown — the hair, in a ball or sort of a pouch, sitting slightly forward, cantilevered, on the top of her head, with a rounded knob-point at the very top. So the effect, then, is what? A crown of flowers. And of fire. Hair that is growing, but contained. And yet there is a billowing up. There is a balancing here. Something constrained. Yet alive in some way.