September 12, 2011

Amongst all the 9/11 coverage this week I watched one show about the selection and building of the memorial at the site.  Five thousand applicants sent in ideas, visions, models, and ultimately one utilizing the footprints of the original towers was chosen.  Two massive pond/fountains were hewn from the foundation, some 30' down below the surface, probably about 1 acre each.  But what really struck me were the words their architect used to describe them.  Standing within the vast space of one of these fountains still under construction, stories beneath the ground, the man explained the design as an effort "to evoke the absence of presence," and thus the impermanence of things we tend to think permanent.  He could as easily have reversed it to the presence of absence and in either case be dancing with very subtle and very real descriptions of our intuitive seventh sense.  This was one sensitive architect.  He went on to describe the fountain waters as representing "gentle persistence."  What better way to describe the yoga of enlightenment as gentle persistence continuously flowing to awaken a feeling of the absence of presence!