I got off my bike. This I usually do when I reach a place where I feel a sense of calm and awe. This afternoon, it wasn’t difficult to find that place. It was all around me.
It was past 4:30. The sun wasn’t about to set but wasn’t too high up either. The number of clouds above was just enough to temper the light. I bathed in gold. Golden sun rays struck golden shafts and heads of the coming harvest.
And the wind. Oh, the wind. It blew and it whistled. The ripe stems of rice, the grass, and the short bushes along the dirt road danced with it … gently now, then taking a deep bow down towards the breast of the earth as a rough wind suddenly interrupts the feast.
I wasn’t a part of all these. I was merely a spectator … holding the bike on one hand towing it beside me as I walk slowly across this carnival of vegetation.
A brief silence crept in.
Then … it was just the sunlight and the rice stalks unmoving.
The wind, suddenly gone.
And that was when it happened.
Me. The light. The rice stalks.
Me. The light. The rice stalks.
Me. The light.
Me. The light.
Me.
It is the place where poems are born; the place where stories are given the breath of life. But it is also where mathematical equations arise—philosophical realizations, self-discoveries.
The theists call it God experience.
The zen practitioner, kensho.
The psychologist, flow.
I call it: Me. The light. The rice stalks.
Sometimes: Me. The mud puddle. The bird chirping.