The Awakened Eye: Tarchin Hearn

how to stitch a robe
entering this mystery of nowful presence

She was born into this extraordinary world;
a living planet,
a dancing of millions of interdependent species,
this mystery that grows us;
flowerings of wonderment, reverence and awe.

It’s what we are.
It’s what we’re in.

It’s who we’re with.
It’s where we are,
and . . .
why we are.

 

It’s what she was, is and will be –  in spite of exponential population growth, leading to masses of people living knee to elbow, cheek by jowl, mingled together in cities with oceans of anxiety, jungles of fantasy, storms of desire and frustration, and all the while shopping to survive, lost in a global culture of technology and mechanization, that, driven by market forces, requires ever increasing human intervention, micro-management, and control.

In a heartfelt moment of nostalgia and deep aspiration, her parents named her Sophie to remind them (and their daughter) of a world of living wisdom, a world that was moment by moment, bit by bit, one creature after another, gradually slipping away.

She grew in body and spirit and interrelatedness.
She might have gone to a regular school.
She might have been ‘successful’.
She might have striven to get somewhere, to prove herself, to be someone
but instead
somehow . . .
She fell into a life of deepening and discovery,
cultivating the ancient arts of kindness and communal being-ness and clear-seeing presence and unrestricted reverential enquiry.

She explored how bodies and minds of myriad species are weaving together this mystery of nowful presence. She cultivated awareness practices of buddhadharma and meshed them with science, personal healing and social responsibility to enter a way of living that, in an age of anxiety and uncertainty, was awesomely inclusive and joyously life affirming.

One day she decided to take robes; to commit herself to a life of health and naturalness and service.  This is her story and . . . it could be your story.

As you sew your robe,
do a mantra of loving-kindness with each stitch.
Consider this robe that clothes you:
the robe of your body, the robe of emotions,
the robe of thoughts, and feelings and memories,
the robe of relationships,
of friendships, companionships, and casual meetings through life,
the robe of blessings and teachings and teachers,
the robe of all your ancestors, leading back to the beginnings of earth,
and the robe of your current life activities,
rippling out in myriad ways and directions,
reverberating into unknowable futures through the lives of all you touch.

Consider how you are clothed in stardust,
galaxies and the gravity of celestial bodies.
Consider all the lives that nourish you, support you,
and lend their beingness to your being.
Blue-jay, maple and may-fly,
Tui, flax and cricket.

And every once in a while, consider
what is there, when there’s no robe,
when there is total nakedness!

Who is it that is stitching?
Who is hosting these threads of your life
– this visible robe for the nourishing of everyone?

Life is not a journey,
we are eternally here.
Life is not a learning,
there is no knowledge to accumulate.
Life is not a testing,
there is no authority to judge.

Dwelling in a space of love,
tendrils of curiosity reaching forth in all directions,
we feel our way,
softening and sensitizing into the richness of community,
a living world within us, around us and through us.

Apprentices of wonderment and awe,
probing and questioning,
sampling and savouring
with calm abiding and vivid discernment exquisitely intermeshed,
we touch our home,
this world of you and me and all of us together,
precious
beyond words

~ Tarchin Hearn

Reproduced with kind permission from
The Awakened Eye: Tarchin Hearn.

The Awakened Eye is a stunning website, which is dedicated to showcasing the work of artisans and artists, writers, filmmakers, scientists, philosophers, and teachers of nonduality, founded by Miriam Louisa Simons.