Thursday, December 07, 2006

a morning thought

This morning in zazen a phrase popped into my head: the effervescent mind. It seems to me, when I reflect on it, that our minds are filled with large and small "thought bubbles," constantly rising to the surface and then disappearing. We are fascinated by these bubbles, which are of course empty. But we can't really drink the bubbles. The bubbles are arising in a medium and the life we are drinking is the whole thing: the bubbles together with the medium. Maybe to stretch the metaphor a bit further, our forms are ways of containing the effervescent beverage so that it is ready to drink. But at any rate, I love the idea of an effervescence that captivates us and adds sparkle, just so we don't mistake the empty bubbles for the drink.