I envision a Temple of Air, nestled on the cliff side of a mountain. Great open portals face east, toward the rising sun, allowing that light to filter into the spare, open space inside. It is a temple of stone and tile through which the wind sweeps constantly. Crisp and chill, a bracing cold that keeps one awake and alert.
Near the portals are poles of planted prayer flags and wheels inscribed with symbols and words wishing fo calmness, spaciousness, and consciousness. As the wind flutters the flags, spins the wheels, he prayers blow like dandelion seeds into the wider world. Wind chimes clank and chime in never-ending and never-repeating music.
The temple gates bear the inscription: “The sky is the mind of the earth.”
On clear days, one can see the span of mountain ranges and valleys surrounding. The sun’s rays are sharp and well-defined. At night, stars are brilliant, deep, and dense, instilling wonder at the bigness of the world. The source of light is visible.
Other days, fog fills the temple. The light always shining from the sky becomes obscured and refracted, its source diffused. A dense gray sky where light is everywhere and nowhere, and nothing is clear. Instead of expansive wonder the pilgrims and priests of the temple feel smothered, bound up inside.
In the eaves, birds make their nests. One can sit in observation as they go out into the world to gather food and materials and return to sustain and nurture their offspring.
One does not go to the Temple to be taught a truth. The Temple itself is the teaching. As one polishes the mind, cleansing it of garbage information, beliefs, and constricting ideologies—so too pilgrims spend time cleaning the bird shit off the ground. Sweeping away detritus carried in by wind and visitors of the human or animal variety. Mending and washing the prayer flags.
The priests of the temple walk with an aloof demeanor, and yet equanimous in their kindness. They look upon all with the same curiosity and warmth, whether murderer or charity-worker. While some say these priests become refined contemplating tree and branch, others say they pick up the blade and practice a martial art both beautiful, precise, and deadly. To watch them dance in conflict, however, is as to watch a leaf fluttering through the air—always spiraling out of reach, evading capture, exhausting opponents through evasion and a light, effortless body.
There is a center in which one sits in meditation, surrounded by invisible movement made known by the cacophony of sound and brilliant flapping textures. A place for things to come and go, to be known, to be prayed, to be sought, and to be revealed.
One might see eagles soar across the mountains, almost unreal in their capacities from the vantage of the primate pilgrim. Yet at one point or another, once these creatures have accomplished their aim, they come to rest. To live too much in the air would afford little time for rest, little to eat. Earth’s gravity calls the creatures back to its touch, for the briefest contact and exchange of energy. Birds build their nests on the ground, where they can create new life, new possibilities, allow those younglings to grow strong before pushing them back into the demands of air.
In one corridor of the temple are narrow passageways that cause intense gusts of wind to blow one about. These rigid portals and passages have labels: “shoulds,” “expectations,” “stories.” The pilgrims encourage each other to, at least once in their visit, walk this corridor. They spread rumors that experiences of exquisite beauty, ease, and celebration lie on the other side of the corridor. Attempting to cross, one finds one’s self quickly confounded by the redirecting intensity of wind. Going forward, a gust pushes rightward. Turning to the right, a gust blows one back. Turning leftward, the wind spins around until the pilgrim finally finds a respite at a calm portal, only to despair in realizing that this was the entrance where they had started. Having gone nowhere, they are exhausted.
In a corridor of the opposing wing is an orchard of trees, whose thick intertwined branches slow and steady the flow of wind. Pilgrims may climb upon them or rest beneath them, feeling the strength of the trees engendered by years of yielding and repairing the damage of yielding to strong gusts. Their rootedness, their connected community offers a deep, powerful grounding of the powers of air.
Another enclave, a butterfly garden, allows the pilgrim to experience the wondrous vision of fluttering beauty that one must simply admire and wait in the hopes that it will alight upon one’s head or outstretched hands. Those pilgrims too eager to catch the wonder find themselves either empty-handed or, worse, with a beautiful creature squashed within their fingers.
Twice a day the temple becomes illuminated with solar light, radiating from the ground and activating mirrored surfaces on the ceilings, the pinwheels, bathing the temple in rainbows and vibrating bright, beautiful light. With this warm, orange glow, myriad arcane symbols appear inscribed in shadow along the ceilings and walls, suggesting a mystery. For early pilgrims, this illumination is a mystery. Those who have spent time dwelling and meditating in the Temple, however, eventually discover the secret.
For there are stairs that spiral beneath the Temple into a narrow cylinder. Descending, pilgrims pass a huge chunk of hanging quartz rock semi-circumscribed by openings cut through the rock to expose the sky outside. Beneath the rock is a sitting place upon which one can look upwards and see the Temple through its floor. What was translucent tile now appears to be clear glass, and from the still, quiet depth the pilgrim quietly watches the active, energetic, fluttering actions above. The riot of colors and vibrations, the movements of birds and pilgrims, all that excitement simply moves and occurs while the observant pilgrim watches.
And, for those lucky pilgrims there when the sun’s ascent or descent meets those cut openings—when the light penetrates the cylinder—that quartz rock becomes illuminated with the sun’s rays. For brief moments, before the rock becomes too dazzling to look at directly, the observant pilgrim might believe that rock has been hewn into the shape of a heart. The bright, brilliant heart of the temple, illumined by the truth of the sun, glowing so brightly that it warms and lights the entirety. If the pilgrim dared to look and risk blindness, they could see the symbols inscribed in the translucent tile floor of the Temple, the symbols cast by this light upon the space above.
Perhaps you, too, will come visit the Temple of Air and speak to the humans and creatures who partake of its wisdom. Perhaps they will tell you their secrets, the insights gifted to them in their work of listening, observing, seeking to understand.
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