the five senses

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Somehow, yesterday and today, the five senses nudge and frolic like puppies around my mental feet: see, hear, smell, taste, touch ... and the fly in the ointment, think.

How enormous the senses are before they get sent through the meat grinder of thought ... and thus explanation ... and thus meaning ... and thus belief ... and thus control ... and thus ... and thus get lost.

This nipping, happy gaggle of puppies began their frolic yesterday. The peppers and onions being sauteed in preparation for the spaghetti sauce. Quietly snap-crackle-and-popping in the frying pan and loosing a smell that told a story that was bigger than Cecil B. DeMille before the story-teller got his hands on it all.

And then there was the rich smell of dark, damp mulch the fellow laid down on the lawn to help make it grow. So quiet. So huge. So non-verbal and yet compelling.

And the three cords of newly-delivered fire wood dumped in the driveway.

And the two sticks of incense I light every morning.

All of them huge and unknown -- ranging hither and thither without explanation or by-your-leave. Utterly clear in what is known within them ... and the moment the story-teller goes to work, they recede and lose their lively savor ... and become unknown.

Is it the same with all the senses? I think it is. Live it and it is clear. Explain it and it is lost.

The Zen teacher Ummon once observed approximately, "When you can't say it, it's clear. When you don't say it, it's missing."

No one wants to be lost, I suppose. But what's so bad about being lost ... assuming there were any other choice?
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