Greetings! This morning I am pleased to share a monograph from the book, Living Nonduality: The Enlightenment Teachings of Self-Realization by Robert Wolfe, Karina Library Press, 2009:
Yea, Listen to the Mockingbird!
It is June 21 (The First Day of Summer) one hundred degrees in the shade, and completely open to the blue skies on this hilltop. Standing out in the pure sunlight is a pine tree about fifty feet tall. Perched at its very top, and overlooking the hills of this ripe green valley is a mockingbird. Singing.
It has been singing since about 7 A.M., when the sunlight first hurdled the mountaintops, and it will continue until the sun is gone; that is, about one half of the day. The mockingbird will fly away for brief periods of this time, during which its absence will be noticed in the quiet.
It sings for several minutes at a time, and then—still singing—it will leap into the air and flutter its wings in a semaphoric display of black and white, settling again on its prominent perch and continuing its plaint. Its song is not desperate, but it is insistent and unrelenting. It is designed to carry for a considerable distance over the hills.
As one listens, on this day in which few creatures are active, the song itself is astonishing. Though repeated, literally, for hours, it is not repetitious. Though one can hear, at moments, the mimicking of a cricket, a frog and the call of other birds, it is nonetheless inventive. What startles the human ear, as it listens, is that each note is sung with an intensity as if it had never been attempted before. Each refrain ends with the urgent sincerity and enthusiasm with which it began. Indeed, as the day wears, the mockingbird renders each passionate soliloquy as if every one of its previous efforts were completely forgotten. There is never a tired, worn or half-hearted effort; each effort is as if it were the first—nay, the only effort. The bird and its song are in no way divided; each breath and the expression of each note are inseparable. The potential for each moment is ever richer than the moment before. And all, and everything that one is, is in that rapturous moment. Nothing more is to be attended to than that.
Robert Wolfe's entire Living Nonduality book can be read for free as an ebook at his website here.
The author has kindly granted me an interview with him which is posted here on my other blog, Simply This.
7 comments:
This is great. I am fascinated by this bird. We have one that comes every year before monsoon....May and June? It hands out in our courtyard and makes a lot of noise...sometimes I throw some new tunes out and it replicates the sounds!! We leave the screen door open and just listen to this bird....and to be honest, I don't know much about them, but where do they go for the rest of the year? It only happens for about a month or 2 and then the little guy is gone.
Fascinating, I have never seen a mockingbird let alone heard one sing.
Very nice! I love to hear the mockingbirds at my house sing - unless it's at 3 AM. :-)
We used to play tag with them when we were kids... We would run out in the yard and they would dive after us and whoever got pecked was out... :)
Yes that can be an issue....3AM until the sun rises....I think it's great...but boy do the neighbors complain:)
Hi Diane, The mockingbird is Tennessee's bird ---and we have them around here. However, I never see them in my backyard... I have seen them from my car.. Don't know why they don't visit us! Oh Well----I'll just wait.. Maybe someday I will see them and hear them sing.
Great story... Thanks.
Hugs,
Betsy
Mocking bird seems to be wonderful but I can't enjoy it since I don't have them here. But mynah birds here sounds different each time it sings, sometimes imitating the animal voices!
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