Develop a mind that is vast like space, where experiences both pleasant and unpleasant can appear and disappear without conflict, struggle or harm. Rest in a mind like vast sky.
— Buddha
I've been thinking a lot about the sky. The vast, spacious, welcoming, and accepting sky. The free, transient, unconstricted, and egoless sky.
I’ve been thinking about how the sky has room. Lots of room.
Room for brilliant, blinding rays and the pitch black of a moonless night. Room for the rippling, oppressive heat of July and the still, seeping cold of January. Room for the hope of cool morning light and the aesthetic pleasure of golden hour. Room for partial eclipses and shooting, streaking stars, for the sheer emptiness of black holes and the explosive deaths of entire galaxies.
Room for sunsets whose shades of red and orange are deepened by plumes of wildfire smoke. Room for the stifling choke of profit-driven pollution and for the familiar patterns of air that guide birds from north to south, and back again. The sky hinders nothing, refusing to impede itself.
There’s room for storms, sudden and scheduled. For the angry bursts of driving rain, punctuated by the bass of thunder. For the steady, unrelenting drizzles that turn puddles into ponds. For the ominous blizzards and whipping winds. Not either/or, the sky seems to tell us. Rather, both/and.
Room for everchanging, formless clouds of all shapes and sizes. For the dark, threatening nimbostratus and gentle, wispy cirrus. For the blanketing, dull stratus that keep us in bed for ten minutes longer and the fog that reminds us that the sky isn’t just “up there.” There is a sky around us, there is a sky within us.
There is a sky within us.
The Mind Sky. When I’m present enough, I notice that there’s room in this sky, too. Lots of room, in fact. But this sky we must recognize, remember, and return home to. We must relax the tight, clenched fist of attachment and identity that can so quickly tighten the boundaries of consciousness, instead surrendering to the way the sky is and always will be. Vast, spacious, welcoming, and accepting. Free, transient, unconstricted, and egoless.
In the Mind Sky, there is room for the boundless joy of spinning in circles to your favorite song and the intense grief of losing a grandparent all too quickly. There is room for the robust, anticipatory laughter that follows a well-timed punch line at a dinner party and the confused, creeping self-doubt that makes you wonder whether you’re cut out for this—whatever this is.
There is room for the righteous rage at our world’s countless injustices and the hatred that must be sacrificed if, in the words of Rowen White, we are to compost that old world and allow something to sprout from the rubble. There is room for not understanding why and for rebellious faith in acts of peace, however small. There is room for tears of sorrow and of gratitude, and the passing clouds of impermanent thought that often accompany both.
There is room for the serenity of a walk along a surface of half sand and half seafoam, room for the profound frustration of not finding a parking spot after looking for forty-five minutes, and room for the deep, knowing love of having done both these things with the love of your life by your side.
There is room for the afterglow that hangs around after the person walking out of the grocery store next to you wishes you a great weekend and there is room for the worry about one’s retirement contributions. There is room for wonder and distraction, for disappointment and fulfillment. There is room for the heart to shatter, to heal, to swell, and to remind us that a more beautiful world is possible, that there’s room—room, right now—for another, better story.
There is room, and there always will be. The sky, in all its expansiveness, does not label, does not constrict, does not control, does not repress. It invites us to zoom out, to seek perspective, and to allow the whole of experience to drift, float, morph, shift, expand, and exist. It allows things—it allows us—to be just as they are, fully realized, and, in our case, fully and thoroughly human. And so I’ve been thinking a lot about the sky.
Couldn’t love this anymore. What an exceptional analogy. The Mind Sky 💜
thank you 🙏