Smoking Buddha

I tried it this weekend, I really did. I was standing outside smoking late on Friday night, and I really tried my best.

I started by closing my eyes and reflecting on my own physical presence. I blocked out everything but my own breathing and heartbeat for sound. I concentrated on my pulse, the in and out of air, the weight of my body pushing down on my legs: knees, feet, and all. I tried to think of nothing, and what that nothing meant. I felt the slight pain in my lower back from some strain now forgotten. I felt the power in my muscles and tendons. I felt the way my jaw wanted to hang loose from the rest of my head. The way my fingertips tingled slightly as my arms fell heavily against my sides.

I stretched out my conscience slightly, realizing and reality-izing things within twelve inches from my body. The front door holding the cold outside air out of my house behind me. The old wooden chairs sitting to my left. The ceiling of the porch above me.

Further out, five feet away, I could sense the plants around me, and all manner of tiny bugs crawling around the branches and leaves, some making a bed for the night, others just awakening to hunt in the darkness. A slow irregular dripping from days-ago rain falling from the roof into the roots of the yew to my right.

Ten and twenty feet away, higher and lower and farther out, even more insects and spiders creeped and plotted. Wind currents taking spores and scents away and closer. The trees in the front yard completing another ring in their inner-trunks, marking another year and preparing for a harsh winter.

Further away now (perhaps a mile?) I can hear the traffic from the closest busy street. The crickets, my god, they sounded like billions and billions of legs screeching against each other. A plane rocketed across the sky above me, unknown distance but moving fast. Inside the metal tube sat at least fifty beings, each with their own goals and fears and dislikes and secrets. All the people in all the houses around me, all of them preparing for rest, or perhaps preparing for a hunt of their own?

Even farther out, past the reach of life-providing air and water, past the magnetic shielding of the Earth and into the rocks silently plodding along in space. Out past the gas giants and stars and ice and gas and all manner of things out there. Out where it is silent. Cold and lonely, surely, but quiet and peaceful.

Then I opened my eyes and realized I was still here. But for a brief moment, I felt everything.