' Beyond the shadow '...

~This passage is from Thomas Merton's posthumous Asian Journal, describing his awakening experience upon seeing the great Buddha statues at Polonnaruwa, Ceylon (Sri Lanka):

“Looking at these figures I was suddenly,
almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-
tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as
if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident
and obvious.

The queer evidence of the reclining
figure, the smile, the sad smile of Ananda standing with
arms folded (much more ‘imperative’ than Da Vinci’s
Mona Lisa because completely simple and
straightforward).

The thing about all this is that there is
no puzzle, no problem, and really no ‘mystery.’ All
problems are resolved and everything is clear, simply
because what matters is clear. The rock, all matter, all
life, is charged with dharmakaya . . .

everything is
emptiness and everything is compassion. I don’t know
when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty
and spiritual validity running together in one aesthetic
illumination.

Surely, with Mahabalipuram and
Polonnaruwa my Asian pilgrimage has come clear and
purified itself. I mean, I know and have seen what I
was obscurely looking for. I don’t know what else
remains but I have now seen and have pierced through
the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the
disguise.”


~from The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton,