No Herons in the Sky
This morning there are no herons in the sky.
No snow on the ridge.
No old monk in a hut.
No cold wind cutting through pine.
It is summer.
The sky is blue.
The birds are ordinary birds.
The light falls where it falls.
The day has no interest in looking profound.
And still.
This is impossible.
Not impossible in some dramatic way.
Not impossible as an idea.
Impossible right here, in the exactness of it.
This blue.
This warmth.
This small movement of leaves.
This birdcall appearing from nowhere.
This body sitting here.
This thought arriving.
This whole morning, given completely, with no explanation attached.
Everything is precisely itself.
And yet nothing can be found in the way we imagine.
Try to get hold of the sky.
Not the word sky.
Not the idea of distance.
Not the familiar story of atmosphere and light.
This.
The blue presence.
Where is it?
Try to get hold of the sound of a bird.
It is utterly obvious.
Nothing hidden.
Nothing subtle.
There it is.
And the moment it is looked for, it is gone.
Or rather, it was never catchable.
Try to find this moment.
Not the thought “now”.
Not the feeling of being here.
Not the little mental label pinned to the streaming brightness.
This.
This exact appearing.
It cannot be stepped outside of.
There is no ledge from which to examine it.
It cannot be grasped from inside either.
The hand closes, and there is only more of it.
More sensation.
More thought.
More light.
More slipping.
Experience does not give itself as a thing.
It gives itself as this wild, exact, unrepeatable appearing.
And we go around saying:
summer, sky, birds, house, body, morning.
Fair enough.
Useful words.
Good for coffee.
Good for keys.
Good for not walking into the table.
But none of them touch it.
The word bird does not explain the sound.
The word sky does not explain the blue.
The word body does not explain this dense, warm, flickering presence.
The word world does not explain anything at all.
It only makes the impossible sound manageable.
That is the trick.
We name it, and it seems less strange.
We say, “It’s just a summer morning.”
Just.
As if that settled it.
As if this blue, this heat, this shimmer, this sound, this breathing, this sudden thought, this whole strange display had somehow been accounted for.
It has not.
Not remotely.
The whole thing is self-evident.
That is the shock of it.
It is not hidden behind the summer morning.
It is not waiting somewhere deeper.
It is not reached by replacing blue sky with snow, or birds with herons, or ordinary life with a better spiritual backdrop.
It is this.
Exactly this.
The simple fact that anything appears at all.
The stranger fact that it appears with such precision.
And the still stranger fact that when examined, none of it becomes the thing we thought it was.
Nothing is missing.
Nothing needs dressing up.
No mountain.
No hermitage.
No sacred atmosphere.
Just this blue sky.
Birds crossing the heat.
A cup on the table.
A thought coming and going.
This life, appearing.
Completely obvious.
Completely ungraspable.
Absolutely wild.
More focused writings and live inquiry sessions are available on Patreon:
https://members.thisradiantspace.com
For those interested, there are also a couple of places left on the workshop starting in June, where we’ll explore this directly in a live setting.
“It was never catchable.” I “practiced” this with my favorite breakfast just now…..the luscious flavors/texture….they kept slipping and sliding…it was utterly uncatchable 😄