KARUNA OOSTENDE

Vast Openness

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All appearances are vast openness,

Blissful and utterly free.

 

With a free, happy mind

I sing this song of joy.

 

When one looks toward one's own mind—

The root of all phenomena—

There is nothing but vivid emptiness,

Nothing concrete there to be taken as real.

 

It is present as transparent, utter openness,

Without outside, without inside—

an all–pervasiveness

without direction.

 

The wide–open expanse of the view,

The true condition of mind,

Is like the sky, like space:

Without centre, without edge, without goal

 

By leaving whatever I experience

Relaxed in ease, just as it is,

I have arrived at the vast plain

That is the absolute expanse.

 

Dissolving into the expanse  of emptiness

That has no limits and no boundary,

Everything I see, everything I hear,

My own mind, and the sky all merge.

 

Not once has the notion arisen

Of these being separate and distinct.

 

In the absolute expanse of awareness

All things are blended into that single taste—

But, relatively, each and every phenomenon is distinctly, clearly seen.

How wondrous!

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Shabkar

(From "The Life of Shabkar")

 

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