Seeing the Stream, Being the Stream

To the cosmic stream of life and death, as to the little stream that is the subject of this collection of photographs, it means absolutely nothing if I identify myself with any particular form of Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or any of the countless flavors of the spiritual or the atheistic. Matters and claims of personality, temperament, character, gender, age group, race, educational level, social class, nationality, political persuasion, professional specialization, or artistic or sporting preference so dominant in social life are irrelevant here. The creek and the universe that cradles it will not congratulate me for the achievements and gains of my past nor console and counsel me about its many traumas, losses, and disappointments. Nothing here will be in the least concerned with whatever dream I may harbor regarding future security and personal fulfillment, along with the usual attendant labors and worries. The point is that when the implacable mirror of nature’s indifference reveals the insignificance of one’s psychological presence, resistance to the mysterious, all-inclusive embrace of life ends. Then, with a spacious silence replacing the mental racket of self-concern, an unfathomable otherness comes into being. It is not a thing or a collection of things, so thought can never capture it. Undivided and unconditioned attention denies the hold that previous experience and the craving for, or fear of, future experience habitually have on the mind. As a result, words and images (the currency of self-centered thought) stop constraining and distorting the open field of awareness. In that state of non-projective, fearless being, sitting quietly on some rock or walking up and down the flowing waters of the stream, solitude is not loneliness but the timeless, anonymous awareness of the whole. It is not that “I” witness a grand spectacle but that, in the absence of a knowing/craving observer, it is as though the stream of existence were seeing itself through the impeccable optics of attentive human eyes and a mind made lucid by the disappearance of memories, present obligations, and fantasies of future fulfillment.