The Moon of Awakening
Scorpio Full Moon 2024
◯♏︎ Scorpio Full Moon 4°17’ // April 23, 2024 // 6:48 pm Central
I’m in Wisconsin, sitting in bed right now with the blankets over my legs. I just finished writing a re-telling of the Buddha’s awakening story, in celebration of this full moon - known in the Buddhist world as Wesak or Vesak. The Scorpio full moon, also known as the Pink Moon, or Budding Moon (among many other names), is the annual celebration of the Buddha Shakyamuni’s enlightenment - an event that took place in northeastern India over 2500 years ago. His story of personal illumination is one of many that exist within the flow of our collective consciousness. I think hearing tales of what is possible as a human creates a ripple throughout the quantum fabric of space-time, connecting us with potentials we may have never considered.
One of the primary figures in the story of the Buddha’s awakening is the great peepul, or fig tree (ficus religiosa). It strikes me as significant that the tree plays such a large role in the story. In fact, for the first five-hundred years after the Buddha’s awakening (until the first century CE) the Buddha himself was depicted in symbol only - the tree being one of those symbols. In certain Mahayana Buddhist scriptures, Shakyamuni Buddha is identified as one of a thousand Buddhas who will appear during this Great Age - and every single Buddha will awaken under a different kind of tree.
Which tree is your tree of awakening?
I love this connection made between the awakened mind and trees. I see it as a recognition of the inseparability between human consciousness and nature. Regardless of whether we are on Earth or another planet like Mars - Nature is still the ever-present firmament of our external experience: molecules, atoms, electrons, particles and waves of light.
Electromagnetic energy arising within a unified field of possibility.
There is a nexus between energy and the space within which it is arising - I see this as the nexus between Consciousness and Nature. While it is possible to perceive the two as separate, essentially they are united.
Just like the other great spiritual and religious traditions of the world, Buddhism in practice is varied, and those different streams can be dichotomous. One of the most synthesizing statements I have heard, is that there are 84,000 different teachings of the Buddha. Which is to say, that there are countless methods, means, and perspectives that can uniquely help us to arrive at the gates of our own pure knowing. To me, this means that every practice, framework, and perspective - whether specifically Buddhist or not - is helpful to someone, somewhere, at sometime. Everything that has value for someone, is valuable for our collective.
Individual evolution is collective evolution.
I love the Buddhist teaching of bodhicitta, that each one of us has the mind of enlightenment as a seed within our hearts. This seed simply needs to be nurtured in order to sprout and eventually bear fruit. As I wrote about in Into the Sunscape, I spent many years trying to accomplish a spiritual state of realization - only to eventually discover that it is in relaxation and an authentic sense of wholeness, that our sensory and somatic qualities of embodiment deepen, open, and reveal the more. When we try, we block the way.
How relaxing and encouraging to know that illumination, wisdom, insight, and the direct experience of ourselves and the true nature of reality, is not something that any of us have to strive for. We may not always abide in a state of knowing, however what we call enlightenment is our original condition. It is the state from which we decided to come forth into this particular time-space reality on Earth, and it is the state to which we will return. Whether or not we recognize this state, or actualize its embodiment during this lifetime, doesn’t change anything about who we really are. I find that my body sighs and opens when I think these thoughts, and that a sense of deeper love and acceptance for humanity arises in my heart.
I value that the Buddha encouraged his disciples (and all of us) to not believe what he (or any other teacher) says as true, but to seek the truth within our own direct experience. These words have helped me follow the golden threads of my own seeking, even when I felt called to go against the grain.
The inspiration to tell the awakened one’s enlightenment story in my own words, came to me last night while we were drifting off to sleep in Iowa, at a small county park along the Cedar River. It was the final night of our meandering road-trip through the desert southwest, on our way back to Wisconsin. During the last two weeks since the Solar Eclipse, the waxing moon has been shining ever-brighter through the windows and roof of our Volkswagen Atlas-turned bedroom. Modern life doesn’t always support our direct catching of moon-beams, what with walls and lights. I notice how the three-week period of sleeping so close to our dearest luminary brought a different quality to my rest. I can feel something palpable change within me as the moonlight strikes my skin. Even while asleep, I somehow feel more alert.
I love that the Buddha came to his enlightenment as the full moon rose in the sky. In my way of seeing Nature as a mirror of the mind, what occurs on the outside also occurs within - this Wesak Moon reminds me of the natural energies of awakening and realization that continually cycle inside us.
A bit ago a gentle rain started, the kind that coaxes the morel mushrooms up from the soil. Then the wind started, with a sound new to me. It isn’t the wind of summer with the leaves flapping. It isn’t the wind of fall with the leaves rustling cacophonously. It isn’t the wind of winter, howling. It is a muffled sound, soft - yet full and large, passing through the treetops with their opening buds. I’m sure a wind like this one has blown before in my life, but tonight I notice it as if for the first time.
The full moon is nigh, and I feel how it is helping to set-in the eclipse season energies. In the beautiful web of my connections, so many soul family and friends have reported the epiphanies, insights, challenges, empowerments, and powerful lived-experiences of the past month - from the Lunar Eclipse in Libra at the end of March, through the Total Solar Eclipse in Aries two weeks ago.
Eclipse energies, just like other terrestrial and celestial moments, are not here one second, gone the next. They are deep, expansive tones that reverberate through the fabric of the physical elements and the whole of our being. Just like the falling rain, their effects last longer than their apparent physical presence - and there is nourishment, catalyst, dissolution, and opening occurring on a level more subtle than human sight.
How beautiful that an eclipse season focused on the axis of Self and Other (Aries and Libra), would be sealed by the Scorpio Full Moon - a moon of awakening. Scorpio is the element of fixed water. While Cancer is the cardinal waters of nourishment and growth, and Pisces the mutable waters of the Great Ocean of Consciousness, Scorpio is water in its powerful and undeniable gravity. This aspect of water dissolves, and Scorpio is a master of transformation. Associated with our reproductive organs, genitals, and the subjects of sexuality, death, and spiritual transformation - the realms of Scorpio are some of the most feared, misconstrued, regulated, and judged. They are also the realms of freedom, liberation, and immortality. And yet, beyond intellectual concepts we can find the core of what Scorpio is about: the life-force, the pleasure of being alive, altered states of consciousness, and the mysteries of embodiment. The realms of Scorpio all have something in common: the path into their folds requires a letting-go, a dissolution, a dissolving of a certain boundary - that of the self.
When I consider the boundaries of the self, what some people may call the ego, I am not thinking that there is any problem with this part of us. We are physically focused personalities for a reason. I do not think it is because we have failed in any way or that we are here to get rid of this part of ourselves. Rather, this focus, this ego, is an incredibly important part of our experience of embodiment. And yet, we can certainly hold on too tightly to ourselves from the standpoint of our concepts and beliefs. When we grip with our intellect, holding tightly to thought-patterns that are out of sync with who we really are, then the boundary we have created is born out of tension and discomfort. This boundary formed by tension and an unnecessary gripping is the boundary that Scorpio’s wisdom dissolves.
The Moon of Awakening
Thus have I heard:
Countless moons ago, long before metal birds flew in the sky, or horseless carriages moved across the land, there lived a young man. He was a prince, and he was born with blessings upon his brow and curiosity in his heart. He wondered about life, and the many forms of it that he saw all around him in his kingdom. He wondered about wealth and poverty, health and sickness, the transition of death, and the inner worlds of joy and suffering. He was so curious about how a person might live without suffering, that he chose to leave his princedom in exchange for meditation in the wild. He met with many wise teachers and mastered their practices, but none seemed to reveal a path beyond suffering. His dedication to his quest was sincere and unwavering, so alone he traveled through the untamed forests of Gaya, where the great ficus trees grew in massive groves. The prince was enchanted by their heart-shaped leaves, which fluttered in the breeze, and whispered knowing straight from the Heart of Nature.
After many days alone in the forest, one evening the young prince felt throughout his whole being that he was ready for a massive breakthrough in insight. His very cells quivered in the resonance of his self-assured alignment. The shadowed trunk of an extremely large ficus tree beckoned to the prince. Wavelengths of shimmering energy ran up and down the outside of the tree’s bark like veins. Instinctively, the prince sat with his back up against the tree’s sturdy body. Immediately, an entrainment occurred between the prince’s energy field and that of the tree’s. Soon the prince’s electrical field was tuned completely to that of the primordial matrix of natural intelligence flowing to and through the tree, and all wild forms near and far, unto the ends of the earth and the stars beyond. The prince sank very deeply into meditation, into states of absorption he had learned and practiced with his teachers. He went so deeply as to dissolve his sense of separate self into the surrounding atmosphere, into the tree, the soil, the other plants, the rocks. From that state of union,
awareness
now perfused within all form
slowly dissolving any sense of solidity
into particles of light
into space
vast and black
no-thing
And then, like all states of being, this deep state of samadhi eventually began to recede like the tide. Gently awareness returned, condensing from no-thing, to light, to a unified field of form, to the body of the young prince pressed warmly against the trunk of the great ficus, amongst all the other individual forms of life surrounding. The sounds of the peaceful spring night individuated to the prince’s ear, and when he opened his eyes, the luminous orb of the full moon beamed through the heart-shaped leaves, shining directly on his forehead. The prince had been in deep meditation many times before, however this time a certain knowing passed through him that reoriented his experience of embodiment completely.
True peace, beyond all suffering is what I have found.
This new, direct perception, seemed to cause the earth around the prince to tremble and shake. He touched the ground to stabilize and confirm his realization, and felt the pulsing of all life respond in witness.
It was not in his deepest absorption, but in his return to the world of form, that the prince recognized the relationship between his mind and matter. He felt the living texture of his perception as a quality indwelling all that he could see. The matrix of life appeared whole and inseparable, a radiance dancing into visibility from the basis of no-thing. The prince saw his own body as a part of this natural display, the expanse of his mind now stretched as vast as space. A supreme bliss that felt like love, adoration, and appreciation flowed like an ocean within and around him, as a golden aura streaming from his skin, and a sense of well-being clearly permeating the plants, soils, stones, and trees. The stars twinkled in joy, the wind swirled with delight. It seemed to the prince that the entire world was celebrating and honoring his recognition. Great beings of light appeared in the sky and amongst the trees of the forest, beaming love and acknowledgement - the prince could feel their presence as reflections of a shared energy - the energy that was him, was also all things.
This knowing is sublime, subtle and precious.
In his heart, the prince felt that he could never explain this relationship, between his mind and all of life.
Who would I tell this to?
Who is there to tell?
A great presence within the wildness seemed to insist that he try.
“What would I say?” the prince wondered. “Is there anyone who could understand?”
A murmur passed on the wind, reaching the prince’s ear, “There are some who can…there are some who can…”
♡
I love thinking how we are the quantum renaissance.
The Buddhas of this Great Age, coming to enlightenment under the wild trees of life.
An Auspicious Moon to you All
With Love,
Emma
“How relaxing and encouraging to know that illumination, wisdom, insight, and the direct experience of ourselves and the true nature of reality, is not something that any of us have to strive for. We may not always abide in a state of knowing, however what we call enlightenment is our original condition. It is the state from which we decided to come forth into this particular time-space reality on Earth, and it is the state to which we will return. Whether or not we recognize this state, or actualize its embodiment during this lifetime, doesn’t change anything about who we really are. I find that my body sighs and opens when I think these thoughts, and that a sense of deeper love and acceptance for humanity arises in my heart.”
Lovely, Emma!
“Electromagnetic energy arising within a unified field of possibility.
There is a nexus between energy and the space within which it is arising - I see this as the nexus between Consciousness and Nature. While it is possible to perceive the two as separate, essentially they are united.”
☺️