INTERLUDES

At times I experience what I call an interlude in my train of thought which is essentially constant. In this interlude it is as though my thinking stops, though I am aware that it has stopped. The interlude expresses as a kind of suspended animation, as if I suddenly find myself floating soundlessly in deep space. In this interlude I see with my eyes but do not define or register; I just see trees moving (in the wind) or even people moving their mouths and making sounds (words). It is a most pleasant experience in the sense that everything just stops and I find myself floating soundlessly, without gravity holding me down, without thought driving me on. I hope this is what happens at death—that everything just stops and one floats without thought in pure silence; without worry, without even any sense of oneself at all. I can generate such an interlude when I go deep into the redwood forest at Nisene Marks, walk up the trail, and sit on my redwood “perch” high above the remote trail below. The silence and stillness there are so palpable that I find myself in an interlude. But today, as I worked at my desk here in my office, I looked out my window, saw the trees moving silently and it happened again without having to go into the forest. I suppose the forest, with its silence and stillness, has been somehow “absorbed” into me, even into my being, as it were, and now emerges into my consciousness when reminded by certain natural occurrences, such as the trees moving in the wind. And I suppose that this is not particularly new to my experience, since, as I was once told by my mother, I would lie in my baby carriage for hours, mesmerized, watching the leaves fall from the maple and oak trees in the park where she brought me. It may be that I have always had such interludes occur but was never aware of it as I am now. These interludes are almost trancelike, like a form of hypnosis—one which I prefer to being perpetually occupied by thoughts and at their mercy. Such interludes have also occurred, now that I think about it, during my long practice of Zen meditation, which is simply sitting and letting thoughts flow without following them, just kind of watching them and watching oneself as if from a distance. Such interludes were never intended but simply occurred when there was a sudden “break” in the clouds of constant thought. I would prefer to be able to live in this kind of thoughtless mind, which is quite peaceful and clear: one is able to see things simply as they are. One still has the ability to relate appropriately and necessarily with the vagaries and demands of existence, but one is of a different mind as well, not getting pulled into the drama of existence or even that of one’s own life, one’s own self. And one is not aloof or withdrawn, but is still active and participant in the world, though without the “attachment,” the emotional ups and downs, the anger, the disappointment, the hopes, the despair. One remains affectionate and loving and able to express gentleness and tenderness to others, as well as able to not fall into identifying with the occupying thoughts of another, which is the general social and cultural activity that misleads societies and cultures into their own particular lost worlds, if not hells.