Point, Right Now

There is a moment that contains everything within itself, every moment that has gone before and every moment yet to come; it is the beginning and the end of every story, and it is perfectly true that, put into words, this has already become a cliché: whenever something comes to an end, something new begins. And indeed, this is what every soul-soother, success coach, fortune-teller and latter-day astrologer, every body-twisting “yoga guru” and group-herding sculptor of personalities keeps repeating. Then there are the song lyrics and the hospital-single-wife-crime-scene television series, showering us with pithy, intuition-soaked nuggets of wisdom on which an entire life can be built, and more and more lives are being built this way, near and far, next door and on the continent next door, on these concentrated problem-solving slogans and on nothing else, because these are what work, quickly and simply, like a replaceable part or instant coffee; and ten thousand kilometres apart people repeat the same sentences to one another at home, in the street, at the office, in the pub, while making love, to themselves in the mirror, and perhaps by now even during their evening prayers, if they say prayers at all, any kind of prayer, to any kind of god, because God alone can be anything, and anyone who is God is alone, because outside God there is nothing, la illah il Allah, outside God there is nothing, not even Nothing can be outside God, only within, within Him, and if Nothing is within, then surely there is something within that is Nothing, Nothing is that something which is within, and so something is none other than Nothing, Something and Nothing are names for one another, and this is Everything, and if this is Everything, then this is everything that can be said, everything anyone has ever said is this, and anything anyone will ever say is this; this is the prayer contained in every prayer, and every prayer is contained within it.

This is what must be understood. It must be understood that every word spoken is prayer, and every word heard is prayer, and every word thought is prayer, and every thought written down is prayer, and every line drawn is prayer; and prayer is not religion, or church, or anything of that kind, but God’s drawing in consciousness. This is what must be understood, because to say that a single moment contains everything, or that everyone is one, and such things, without truly knowing it, is like treating a flea bite with morphine. Feeling is not enough for knowledge: one must understand, one must understand rightly, because right understanding brings forth vision; all at once one sees the whole as a whole, and feeling is contained within this as well. Anyone who has ever understood anything knows this.

But the reverse is not true, for although a ring is made of gold, this does not mean that gold is made of rings. And the vision born of understanding is nothing other than the seeing of God’s drawing in consciousness, that drawing of which it cannot be decided whether it is God’s drawing because it depicts God, or because God has caused it to be made; and whoever has seen it already knows that this drawing has always been here, and I shall always see it, from now on I shall always see it, because I have always seen it, only it was as though I had forgotten, but now I remember, of course, I recognise it, and now I know, because I see, that nothing need be decided and nothing can be decided, because this is God’s self-portrait, it can be nothing else, since He is the One outside whom there is nothing; no one can see Him from outside, there is no one who could depict Him, because whoever depicts anything depicts Him, though perhaps without knowing it, without knowledge of Him, because I had forgotten, but now I remember, and I know that from now on I shall always have remembered, and even if I were to forget again, I shall still remember that I remember, because if I remember one thing, I remember everything, and whoever forgets, I remember, and whoever remembers, I remember, whoever speaks, I speak, wherever anyone sees, I am the one who looks, if someone moves, I move, if there is suffering, I suffer, I rejoice wherever there is happiness, in every passing away it is I who die, and every birth is my life; verily I say unto you, for there is a moment that contains every other moment within itself, every moment is within it, and therefore it is within every moment, like the point that becomes visible when the tip of the graphite touches the paper, and in that instant it becomes evident that it has always been there, at that very point, always precisely there, never anywhere else, and therefore always anywhere, at all times everywhere, motionless, in eternal motion the drawing lives in its points forever passing away and coming into being, as the graphite devours the untouched paper step by step like a stallion drunk with desire, the eternally enamoured seducer, Apollo clothed in cloud, for Apollo is there in every cloud to spill his seed into fertile valleys, and Zeus hides within every swan so that every woman may become Leda, so that the dazzling whiteness of the swan’s feather may illuminate every nook and fold steeped in fertile fluids, so that the radiant power of the sun may cleanse every body of the stains of forgetting, so that every stalk of wheat may become the hair of Osiris eternally reborn, that in every harvested ear he may rise again to life, that the green of the sap circling through the trees may be made incandescent into the sacrificial whiteness of untouched paper, that the death-cry of the slaughtered animal may be carried into the sky upon the smoke of the sacrificial pyre, so that everyone may one day behold Padmasambhava Buddha being born from a lotus floating upon a crystal-clear mountain lake, so that the palm of hundred-armed Shiva may curve around the handle of every sacrificial knife, so that his muscles may draw every bowstring taut, his fingers dance upon the trigger of every weapon, because there will always be weapons, weapons there will always be, but the weapon is the instrument of sacrifice, and the victim’s sacrifice cannot be in vain, there can be no such thing, because a sacrifice made in vain is no sacrifice, a sacrifice made in vain is nothing, or rather is no-thing at all, and therefore nothing is in vain, not even the absence of something, because it is only when something is absent that we truly remember it, and so absence itself is memory, and memory is knowledge, God’s drawing, the trace of His movement upon the paper lying here before me, the sacrificial lamb that preserves the image of every victim and every sacrifice that ever was or ever shall be, every point the graphite tip cuts into its body is my sacrifice, and I am the one to whom the smoke of every sacrificial fire ascends, I am the one who separates light from darkness, every point bears the trace of my hand, and every line is the imprint of my time, it is my finger that curls around the grip of the weapon, mine is this ancient, untouched face and the eye that looks nowhere, from which tears stream in heavy drops, the tears of the victim, and the image is drenched in tears, God’s drawing, which, whatever it depicts, depicts me, even if it cannot yet be seen, but it is here, it is already in my finger, while I tremble there at the tip of the graphite; there is silence, the door is closed—well then, let us begin, thought the draughtsman as he raised the pencil above the paper.