Cucumbers

Royaumont Abbey

Feb. 20

Sensation needs to be felt and understood as an organ, not a phenomenon. 

This is what we mean when we refer to organic sensation. It’s sensation that arises and emanates within Being from an organ which is just as alive and consistent as the heart or the lungs; it breathes in and out in every moment with its own rhythm. It does not go away; it does not stop doing its work. This work is fundamental to the establishment of Being, as opposed to existing. 

This may sound odd; yet the function of sensation as an organ is a natural one, and in fact that very function which the organ kundabuffer blocked. Kunda means vessel in Sanskrit; and what this tells us is that kundabuffer blocked the sensation of the vessel, that is, the body. 

One can naturally (effortlessly) deduce from the nature of organic sensation itself that the understanding of the body as a vessel is quite impossible without it; and one knows quite precisely that in this lie all the obstacles that keep us asleep within life.

I am alive within myself as a result of the voluntary work of this organ. It provides the initial heartbeat of awareness. From this place, which grounds the multiple currents of being, personality and psychology in a reliable matrix of stability, I can be present. Not because “I” am able to be present—  not because I can do anything. I am present because this organ functions, it participates. “I Am” is born here in this action, where thought meets sensation.

From this place I walk on the street. 

I eat lunch. 

There’s a cucumber in my bento box which speaks a language of color and texture known only to the organism. May mind cannot comprehend it alone; and when the other parts help, I see a sacred nature in it. An immense gratitude arises: 

There are cucumbers. 

There’s the color green. 

There is food.

Each of these things is now revealed as a miracle, not an ordinary thing.

All this in a slice of cucumber.

I begin to see that everything I think I know about life is misinterpreted by thought; that things far more mysterious than my various imaginations are taking place. Lunch looks different; manhole covers look different. Each and every perception, in fact, that is encountered with the undertone of sensation as an active participant looks different—

Feels different—

Life is not at all what I thought it was. The vessel receives life: and life is unexpected. Beautiful. Filled with a love which sounds a distinctive note in harmony with the undertone of sensation. Sensation in turn aligns; there’s an octave present that begins with the “do” of sensation and then immediately segues into a set of much more complex notes. They bring new layers of meaning—subtleties which are tonal and not of the ordinary intellect— into Being. 

May your heart be close to God, 

and God close to your heart.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.