The last time my first teacher Nancy Amphoux came to Scotland we sat in a dusty room in Glasgow Street.
In the afternoon while we were sitting, bright sunlight shone into the room, illuminating all the dust hanging in the air.
The light was still, the dust was still, neither obstructed the other.
The smoke from the incense moved amongst both, the dancing of a life.
In Buddhism we keep coming across, in a slightly disguised way, the idea of a person.
Who or what is walking the Way if not a person?
Who or what is balanced, if not a person?
And indeed we can see walking as a kind of dynamic balance. The integration of apparent dualities within a living whole, ‘opposites’ reconfigured as two aspects of something which is dynamic and alive.
We need to find this true person. And our mind cannot find it. All it can ever find is a person who has been cut in half, and no matter how hard we try we cannot restore that person to life.