How long has it been, dear reader, since you looked up into a starry sky at night?

Just looked at the beauty and vastness of it all?

All of that intricacy and the way the Milky Way winds its way through the Southern night sky like a giant spider web. Like a huge dream-catcher?

I don’t know about you, but the vastness of it all can overwhelm me.

My nightly encounters with the age of the universe, presented in the heavenly edifice, the silent canopy of stars - can provoke a profound sense of meaning – or the lack thereof – in me.

It can also make me feel rather small and insignificant in comparison to it all.

I do the human thing and try to impose a structure on it all. I try to find the constellations that man has woven into this rich tapestry.

I find Aries, Orion, Gemini.

I muse on the Pleiades and the creation stories that have been associated with these stars. But the vastness of it all returns after a while and says: “give up little human – you cannot dissect me – I remain vast and glorious and intangible to your feeble rationality.”

I get the same feeling looking out at the ocean from a beach.

The same sense of smallness and inconsequence and “nothingness” against such vastness. Again, my rational human brain tries to find patterns in it all.

I look for rips in the surf and for ships on the horizon, anything!

I try to spot dolphins and if I am very lucky I may see some riding in the waves like the divine beings that I think they are.

But sometimes, even for a second my mind drifts to the horizon and I just take it all in – the immensity of it all!

Then I feel the sand squish between my toes - the roughness of it or the startling coolness of the water rushing onto my feet and it jolts me back into my body.

Whew!

Thought I might lose myself for a minute there in the pure vastness of it all. Maybe it is just “no-mindness?” The Japanese call this “Mushin no shin” which is a Zen expression meaning “the mind without mind”.