The Sound of Being

A few days ago, the early morning light drew me into the Temple garden before meditation practice. As I paused among the dew-bright blades of grass, I took in the bird sounds washing through the trees.

Are the sparrows perched high in the maples, or are the maples inside the cadence of their cry?

When my heart rests open, the sound isn't distant; it blooms exactly where I stand. But, ever eager to measure, my thoughts whisper, "Listen to that bird song over there," and in that whisper, I'm inventing two shores.

Yet before the echo of thought, hearing and heard are one unbroken stream, flowing without banks. To notice at all is to dissolve the boundary I have imagined. The Jay's screech and the breeze that carries it arise together, each a facet of the same luminous jewel.

In that intimate resonance, I, too, am sound. I'm the vibrating wing and the trembling leaf. Nothing remains outside the melody that calls me home.