The Properties of Light

Mid-October in Central Park, one of the elms has changed early, burning with a light grown accustomed to its own magnificence, imperceptible until this moment when it becomes more than itself, more than a ritual of self-immolation. I think of sacrifice as nourishment, the light feeding bark and veins and blood and skin, the tree better off for wanting nothing more. I used to imagine the chakra like this—a hole in the soul from the top of the head, where the light of knowing can shimmer through. In the summer of 1979 I saw that light shoot from my brother’s forehead as we sat chanting in a temple in Manila. He didn’t see it pulsing like a bulb in a storm, but he said he felt the warmth that wasn’t warmth but peace. And I, who have never been so privileged, since then have wondered if we believed everything because not to believe was to be unhappy. I’ve seen that light elsewhere —on a river in Bangkok, or pixeled across the shattered façades of Prague—but it is here where I perceive its keenest rarity, where I know it has passed over all the world, has given shape to cities, cast glamour over the eyes of the skeptic, so that it comes to me informed with the wonder of many beings. I can’t begin to say how infinite I feel, as though I were one of many a weightless absence touches, and out of this a strange transformation: the soul ringed with changes, as old as a tree, as old as light. I am always learning the same thing: there is no other way to live than this, still, and grateful, and full of longing.