Prajnaparamita
Dancing to Save the Earth
40 x 60
watercolor, 1989
 spiritual trailblazer
the story of
this painting
.
Eeeeeee Green grandmother
tree
Perfume rose circle
bleed bath me
Fragrant wind form
free breath
Empty earth throne
crown seed
Creation story light
house be
Snakes glowing wisdom
heal bring
Rain nourish earth
roots feed
Eeeeeee Green grandmother
tree
--a Power Chant
to Heal the Earth Body
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The
Story of this Painting
I am in Bodhgaya,
India, facing the vajra throne for the first time. Ecstatic tears flow
down my cheeks in recognition that I've waited lifetimes to come to
this place. The Bodhi Tree, her roots and branches having forever called
me, sending forth thirty six years of TREE visions welcomes me to the
center of the Buddhist world with a loving embrace. A child of hers
has come home and the moment opens unfolding infinitely. All that I
am rushes forth to engage with the sacred, yet my body stands motionless.
Wisdom speaks -- Now my child you learn the Earth Dance.
I'm following a
map where there is no beginning and no end and I am afraid. Afraid of
the emptiness. Bending down to kiss the ancient withered face of the
crone as she lies sleeping, I turn to find myself alone. Others flee,
not understanding my affection for one who has faced old age with power,
her skin the brown bark of grandmother tree. Standing at the center
of the Earth I watch as they come to say goodbye, not even asking if
I would like to attend the Grateful Dead concert with them. Relieved,
they walk, then run blindly till they are out of sight, not turning
for a moment to look back. Running blindly to at last find the edge
when they fall off. Deep sadness-grief fills my heart. It's lonely here,
the place of no goals, no memories. Time folds in upon its self forming
infinite petals of fire tulip flowers weaving a net of interconnection.
But the interconnection, the interdependence is unconscious and I'm
alone again in the emptiness.
Reaching out to
touch the face of my beloved, he recoils. The stone woman's visage has
again come forth in the time of blood. Her ecstatic face hiding. When
the stone woman gets up to dance, he knows she is one. The veins of
the slowly spinning mandala wheel frozen into silver gray melt and become
molten gold rays. Intertwining they become the net of Indra and weave
together seemingly separate stars of light. Wisdom uncoils and resurges.
An age old map maze on the back of a tortoise crawls forth from the
ocean to lay eggs in the boundless particles of sand. Eggs that bare
the twice born. Once cradled into earth in luminous shell coffins, the
mammoth mother turtle dancing on the beach, her ecstatic life giving
drum beat to remind the sleeping turtle-ettes to awaken. Few break their
shells and emerge, for in modern times their rough craggy brown shell
skin, the face of the dark mother is not cherished for its innate beauty.
Value is transformation into torti-combs and bracelets by human hands.
Human hands not realizing in ignorance that they create their own shackles
and iron masks. The ancient mothers gather to dance and drum on beaches
since the beginning of turtle time, only now the desire weakens as wise
brown fathomless eyes gaze upon the sacred ground wreckage. Womb courage
waltzing ocean waves to bring new life. Primal strength to hold the
earth embraced in space on her tortoise back. Joy in dancing life into
form. It's turtles all the way down. Down as an infinite spiral that
radiates in ten directions and folding in time comes back to its own
womb birthing tortoises, hares, trees, dragonflies, flowers, devas and
beings unceasingly.
Hares sitting on
zafus breathing when they want to dance and hop and eat carrots and
procreate. Hare priests and priestesses knowing the time to dance will
come when their breath moves music in their veins. Molten gold music.
Zafus turning into star filled discs on night sky phonographs singing
lives of antique grandfathers transformed into storyteller bards with
crone-like muses stroking their canyon lined brows. Spiritual gatekeepers
watching their hare prodigy crawl, hearts pounding to the edge of the
zafu circle only to find edgelessness. Hare prodigy hopping up and down,
twitching, seething, contorting into Tibetan ferocious deities with
compassionate Buddha navels and lotus hearts opening and closing. Hares
standing on their heads to have feet feel the sky for an edge. Finding
edgelessness they wait for baby tortoises to grow and support the earth.
A tortoise net to catch them at the edgelessness. A tortoise mind to
contemplate emptiness.
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