We are in late December, in the Maritime Alps, high up on the mountain that dominates the vastness of the sea just below us. It is chilly, the tramontane is spreading from the infinite below. A light mist, wet and cold, rises from the black and velvety waters. In the tale of daddy rock the landscape at the limit of a dream, our clumsy steps of bipeds are fortunately guided by the bluish lights of the stars and of the almost full moon. This one is so huge that it seems to be suspended by a thread, a kind of celestial lamp post.
A friend brought me here to meditate at the foot of a rock. A precise place therefore, no chance in the choice. We have all the material to resist to the cold of a prolonged sitting posture on a winter night.
After making our way through the bushes of the Provençal scrub, the dark silhouette of the rock stands out against the starry sky. We are there. It is useless to speak, I thank inwardly the choice of my friend. There are places like that which immediately impose a state of receptivity of spirit. This rock, enormous, solitary, formidable granite out of nowhere is welcoming. I have the need of anthropomorphic reflex and give it immediately the rather silly name The tale of Daddy rock. I am there, silly, naive, clumsy, too much space, too much air, too much spaciousness and there this rock daddy who comforts me, welcomes us.
It is here that we are going to meditate, that is to say to abandon ourselves to the flows of the sensations, by observing them. To note for oneself the permanence of all our impermanences. To feed ourselves without a word of this vast external space and to let it invade us internally. Papa Rocher, with his solid wings, protects us from the wind. Without being a believer, I almost want to say that Papa Rocher has a soul. This soul is benevolent, protective. It emanates an enormous force that I must describe as telluric. In order to keep the pseudo dignity of my little materialistic references. We are hanging on a piece of cosmos. Catapulted in the infinite space of the so-called inert and lifeless things. What keeps us from an inner glide is this “telluric” force of Papa Rocher. Suspended and magnetized, that is what we are.
From this night the tale of Papa Rocher, in spite of my reticence as a city dweller, I remember being welcomed like a child under the paternal protection of a rock. And thanks to this father of granite, to dissolve myself a few hours in this mystery that is the real. Granite, earth, sky, stars, moon, water, wind, bushes, all these things that are things because our mind thinks them as they are. We refuse them because their language has become unknown to us. Whereas it is enough to let ourselves dissolve under the protection of a rock which does its best to spare us the strange fear of losing ourselves in the unity of things, the melody of the universal consciousness.
Thank you Denis.
