“And when do you feel that?” the master asks.
“When I live my own life. Should not this confirmation of the way, of the correctness, of the ultimate harmony help ease my anxiety?”
“Did you see your beloved at the dance?” the master asked me.
I thought. I know it felt as though, when I was there, that everyone was there, but it is true, I did not see her.
“No,” I say. “I did not see her.”
“And now?” asks the master. “Do you see her now?”
“The falling stars are what we can see, feel and hear of the rippling of the masters’ cloaks when they fly through the heavens. No, I do not see her, now,” I say.
“I see,” he says. “Have you visited the stars too?”
“Yes,” I say and smile. For there a few times I have flown, not for the music of the dance hall, not just for the peace, but for the dedication of the stars, who move whether or not they can feel it, whether or not they are seen.”
“And so?” said the master.
I waited, for I did not know what to say next. I had heard the words and climbed the waves of mountains and laughed as the peaks tumbled under my feet. So, finally, I said, “Because no matter how many mountains I climb, no matter how many times I dance in the coral hall, I find myself in a world with carpets and floor boards that are nailed down, and that cannot tumble with the gods’ laughter; I find myself here. I find myself having to remember the Coral Hall, instead of living in it.”
The master smiled here, in an effort to contain his chuckle.
“The Coral Hall is not a place for one to live.”
I waited.
“It is a place in which the living learn how to live, and it is nourished by our sincere desire to do so. It is a place in which the essence of how life can be lived is cultivated, but one cannot live there. Not one who intends to return back home, to other places.”
I continued, “I do not know how to reconcile the difference between this world and that. But I know that exists. I have danced there! Why isn’t that enough for me?”
“It is one thing,” the master says, “to visit Egypt, by oneself, while one is sitting in Virginia. It is one thing to feel the texture of the mat on which one meditated 2000 years ago. This is exciting! It is like a new mountain to climb, but then we return to base-camp, we return home. We exit the The Great Coral Hall and find, all of a sudden, that it did not contain the whole world: it could not contain the whole world for now one is outside of it.
The bells ring and the gongs are sounded. We are called by those here, now and not there, then. Here, at home, leaves seem to fall with no meaning. The wind blows, but we do not know what it says. The floors and carpets are nailed down here. The dragonflies mate in front of us, but we have to pee, or cook dinner, and so we do not see the great rainbows the energy of their union streaks across our lawns. The dance, here, has too many intermissions--intermissions between what people know, perceive, believe, feel, and understand. The music comes in fits and starts .This world is made up of disconnects between connections, not of the connections between disconnects . And so, my good student, you practice connection!
You can transcend here
