The entire world of the ten directions is one bright pearl. How do you understand this?

 “Tell them ‘I Am’ sent you.”  “Cleave the tree, and I Am there.  Lift up the rock, and there you will find me.”  I have read that this is problematic for some translators because “This has never been satisactory, for when one usually lifts up a stone all one finds are worms and slugs.”  (www.gospelofthomas.info/essays/stone.html) well, you can lead a horse to water …

The entire world – the sunsets, the acts brave men and the acts of evil – ALL of it is one bright pearl.  How do you understand this?  There is no separation between you and the rest of the universe.  This is emptiness.  No separation between you and the sunset, or you and your parents.  The slugs and the worms under the rock are you too.  This is emptiness.  I heard a pastor once explain the story of the birth of Jesus as this. The point was that you find God wherever you turn, and we are to be reminded that this mystery is even amongst the shit and piss and fleas of the stable. 

But you are not the sunset, nor your parents, nor the mountains and rivers.  This is form.  The stories we tell to grapple with this, be they of the God of Abraham, the Buddha or the boson are also empty. These constructs attempt to answer questions we have and construct a whole we can contain and understand in just the smallest piece of the universe, our minds.  If this was possible, it would be a true miracle.  We do find answers to some questions and those answers may offer something pleasant for the moment.  But they do not last, so we start counting breaths again.  The buddha asked, “what lasts?”  Only this one bright pearl lasts.  how do you understand this?

If I have a soul it is in the flowers and the fish and the sunrise.  Those things will not go away. They will be forever wrapped up in this ball of a universe expanding or doing whatever it is doing that we don’t yet understand. 

The entire world is one bright pearl.

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