Sangha Sharing

From the Heart

(This issue features a piece by Vickie Walter from Maryland written after a practice session while on a personal 3 Doors retreat. VOCL invites you to share a short poem or writing of yours that has arisen through your connection to Bön. Please limit your poetry to 40 lines or less. Just send it to our This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .)

Being in True Nature

Sunrise over the Potomac

I pull my chair into a patch of sunlight close to the low split-rail fence that separates the yard from the wild vegetation, tall trees and wide river beyond. I bring to this sitting the intention to explore being open in the world during these times of Covid-19, now that I have ventured away from the security of my house and driven to a small cabin in a Virginia state park that sits on a cliff above the Potomac River.

All the five elements are here—the earth below my feet, the air blowing lightly through the leaves, the water of the wide Potomac in front of me, the fire of the sun warming my right shoulder and head, and the space of the pale blue sky above. I sit and feel it all, feel myself relaxing and resting. This is not a “formal” meditation. I just want to open to everything, if I can, without any structure. I sit. I breathe. I let go.

All of the creatures here slowly make themselves visible to me: the small birds that flap their wings as they land on the fence or tree branches; larger black birds that glide by; and two majestic eagles soaring past, riding the currents of the wind. A large brown butterfly with circles of bright orange outlining its wings, and tiny white butterflies that dart here and there. A small light brown lizard that moves along the fence, pausing when it approaches where I sit. I feel peaceful, still and quiet inside. As I sent warmth to it, the lizard also seems to relax, to give up its vigilance.

One of the tiny butterflies lights on the ground in front of my foot. I realize that I’d only seen the white underside of their wings—the top is a rich mocha color, like mushrooms. A large lizard climbs the fencepost a couple of feet in front of me, dark stripes down it back and an iridescent blue tail that wiggles sinuously like a snake. I feel a touch of fear, a drawing back, and wonder who is feeling fear. I look and don’t find anyone, so the fear dissolves. A fly lands on the fence, and I feel distaste—I don’t like flies, and last night inside the cabin one buzzed around my head and landed in my hair. Now I look at that dislike and see that it is only a past story, nothing to do with this moment. I open to the fly, too, and when it lands on my hand I lift it, say hello, and softly blow the fly away.

I am not a student of the natural world. I don’t know the names of most trees, or birds, or flowers. But it seems as if the world opens to me, in all of its fullness, and I see into it more deeply. I see its impermanence, its illusory nature. The river at first seems perfectly still; shifting my focus, I see that it continuously moves with small ripples driven by the wind and currents. The clouds, which a moment ago seemed unmoving, have shifted, and so have the two sailboats that had seemed so still in front of my vision; now they are downstream. Nothing is solid or fixed; everything is changing.

Yet there is an unchanging depth to everything. As I let go more, I can see this boundless, unchanging nature in myself and in everything. And yet each leaf, each sprig of goldenrod, each bird has its own unique nature, its own shining clarity. Everything is truly itself, and at the same time part of the whole of this larger openness—including me.

The large butterfly with the orange spots and a small brown/white butterfly land close to me on a blade of grass. I feel touched by their beauty, their completeness—as I do by everything around me. All seem infinitely precious. This boundless nature is in everything, and in this present moment it feels “all good,” complete—even though I hold the knowing that the eagle is a raptor searching for its prey in the river; and that the virus is taking more lives daily; and fires and other disasters are destroying parts of this earth; that our planet is moving farther from the sun each day; and that we are living in times that seem inauspicious and may well become worse. All of it can be held in this boundlessness, which is unmoving and unchanging.

This doesn’t mean I don’t mourn the loss of life, or the suffering, or the changes in this world, or my inability to recognize my authentic self much of the time. Each moment, it’s a matter of letting go, shifting perspective, and opening with awareness to the larger space that is always here within and around me, opening to each person, each situation, each thought or feeling—everything. That’s a joyful thing to do. That’s a valuable way to live the rest of my life, until my final breath. And perhaps living in this way I can make some small contribution that will be of help to this struggling, suffering, beautiful world.

At the end of my sitting, I stand up from my chair, see and feel the fullness of the wide river, the trees, the blue sky above. I feel myself standing, embodied. Everything is vast, so much vaster than I ever think it will be when I am in my small mind. I take a breath. I wish to remember this, to have confidence in it, as I do now. Oh, shit—with that wish I am already moving into the future, still holding this boundlessness within me yet knowing that my perception of it will fade, as it always does.

But for now, in this present moment, it has not faded. It is still here. And what if it doesn’t fade? What if it doesn’t? What if, one day, it remains?