Confessions of a Coffee Lover

I like to have my morning coffee in a comfortable recliner chair

which I keep upright, sometimes sitting with feet of the floor,

and sometimes assuming the crossed leg posture

that used to serve me in formal meditation.

I like to wait quietly for the caffeine magic to permeate my body.

Mind’s thoughts float in and out,

and I notice how some of them carry an enticing charge

of emotion and reactions,

like a richly colorful painting thrown up suddenly on a wall,

full of vivid attractions and repulsions,

only to fade back into nothingness from which it came.

When it’s not too hot,

which is often in the early summer mornings here in the river valley,

I’ll keep the big south window open next to me.

Sparkling moments of pleasure arise with the outpouring of birdsong.

Fascinating thoughts engage me.

A sense of meaning—encompassing and mysterious—

settles my questing mind.

It can become very quiet, a silent space that cannot be found

in the same way the birds are outside in the yard,

or the chairback plush softness is against my back,

or the soft cycling motor of the refrigerator

humming over there in the kitchen;

yet its presence draws me toward itself,

while always receding from any attempt to grasp it.

In this space of silence, I’m struck by a strange thought:

each birdsong, every thought, the sensations of the body,

they all appear as something entirely new,

as something that has never before been,

in a universe itself new to existence.

This is true even though in memory,

these experiences and ones very like them have occurred

many, many times before;

but that is a memory, another thought-space,

itself new in this moment

The value of all of this, if there is any,

may be simply to remember the feeling of the experience

when afflictive emotion or blind, judgmental thoughts arise,

and to remember the feeling of mystery,

and to allow, allow that to wash the slate clean.

Quantum Source ... Quantum World ... Quantum Void ... Quantum You!