meditation 102

Meditate

on space

as

everlasting

supportless

void

all pervading

beyond conception . . .

You enter

that

which is

not limited

by space.

Note:

(full screen, kindly)  

In The Manual for Self Realization, Lacksmanjoo's commentary characterizes the verse's space as blue sky rather than nocturnal black.

His reason?

Vast, featureless,

vastly engulfing vistas

erode away our quotidian,

day-to-day conceptualizing.

They simplify

transcending.

Cloudless blue

is  

featureless,

fetching

of infinities . . .  

more so

than star-speckled black.

Even on alfalfa-scented summer noons,

fields stretching out forever

everywhere,

on all sides

fields dissolving,

melting

into seas

of mirage,

acres of corn

unanchored,

adrift,

floating

above themselves

in green,

undulant warps,

blurs of corn

tassels, golden,

bursting with pollen,

waving

like mermaids

of ephemeral isles:

with each alfalfa plant,

every cornstalk,

each cottonwood

leaf,

every golden field

now

lying soft,

still,

limp

with silence,

the stillness,

swelling

heavenward,

hymn-like,

heaped

like hay,

and weighing

down,

pressing in,

with heavy honey

filling every pore

with breath-capturing sweetness,

sprawled out on our backs

in some haystack

somewere

in the middle

of everywhere,

gazing up moonily,

abstractedly,

into pure

endless

blues . . .  

Lakshmanjoo suggests

we proceed

from bluishness of the ether . . .

to almost blue . . .  

to . . .  

............................................

Moonless,

pitch-black nights,

when we cannot

make out

our hand

in front

of our face,

are equally featureless –

equally facilitative . . .

But the multi-featured

black

field

of stars,

of constellations,

is imagistic,

productive

of thoughts,

myths,

conceptions.

A miner

gazes up

at night

into streams

flecked

with gold.

A mythmaker

beholds

the Goddess,

fanning out

her waves

of golden hair.

A Spanish sailor

navigates

by Stella Maris,

wherein

a Chumash shaman

finds

Sky Coyote.

Swami Lakshmanjoo and Pandit Dina Nath's original reads as follows:

102. Meditate on the outer space as ever lasting, supportless, void, all-pervading, and beyond conception. You enter that which is not limited by space.  

By outer space, Swamiji and Panditji here mean bāhyākāśa the bluishness of the ether. For details, I refer you to Lakshmanjoo's comments in his Manual for Self Realization, edited by John Hughes.

Although the bluishness he speaks of is not what blues musicians play, on cloudy days, you can't lose with the blues.