Zen & The Dark Side of the Moon

” And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear 
You shout and no one seems to hear. 
And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes 
I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.”

– Brain Damage – Pink Floyd

Oh my Lord!

Don’t look now but I appear to have just quoted a Pink Floyd song, I can honestly say I never thought I’d find myself typing that sentence. Just to be clear I’ve nothing against the Floyd before y’all flood my replies with complaints…….they’ve just never been my bag.

So why now, well for anyone who happens to have zoned out from the news recently, the Chinese have managed to land a robotic probe on the far side or “dark side of the moon”. The probe is called Chang’e 4 and is rather poetically named for the Chinese moon goddess. One of its pictures is in the banner.

I thought it was pretty spellbinding news to be honest, but then I’m an unashamed night-sky nerd.

Now I know there are a billion and one more worthy things we could all think of to spend the money this has taken on, all of them down here right where our feet are planted, but I still see the magic in the achievement. For years we have thought that it was just too mountainous over there to hope to land anything safely.

It just makes my heart skip at the wonder of it all.

Great! But so what you may ask.

Well the thing is, the problem with being on the dark side of the moon is that you can’t easily communicate with earth from there. And apparently, it is “tidally locked” with the earth (however that works) so that the same side is always hidden. So previously whenever a spacecraft orbited it would simply drop out of contact until returning to the light side. There is some footage from various Apollo missions that show just this phenomenon. All mission control could do was cross their fingers and hope for the best.

Of course the Chinese have gotten around this by bouncing a signal of an additional satellite they have blasted up there purely to act as a relay.

Fabby, but still so what?

Well it’s a convoluted analogy for how I have dropped out of contact for the past 3 months. Yup that’s right, I’ve been on my own dark side of the moon waiting to re-establish a connection with y’all. If you haven’t noticed……well you cheeky buggers.

I’ve disappeared, honest.

So where have I been …… well nowhere……..simple as that really. I just suddenly got a little lazy and decided to stop speaking.

Well, you know how it is ……… the longer you leave speaking to someone, the harder it seems to be to think of what you will say when you do make contact again. Days disappear into months before merging into years. And of course no one can remember why they don’t speak anymore.

So that’s the real truth, I’ve been trying to think of what to say to all you good people that is worthy of my absence. I mean if I returned with a published play that would have been worth the wait, right?

Well that’s tough I’m afraid…this is all you’re getting. A lucky piece of celestial synchronicity that allows me to return to the fold with zero explanation. I’m like Agatha Christie, with fewer murders and an ever so slightly smaller readership.

But anyway, back to the moon. In zen it crops up all the time, a symbol of truth and enlightenment. The Buddha is sometimes called “the bright moon who illumines the world.”

The flipside of this is that our true nature is hidden from us in the same way as the cloud-covered moon, or in our analogy the dark side of the moon. And to be honest I’ve been staggering about in the dark for the past 3 months just trying to find some truth.

And what have I learned? What startling piece of insight can I offer from my journeys?

Well not a whole lot, I thought I’d found the moon for a moment there, but it turns out it was just my finger pointing at it. Aah, a little zen joke there, the old ones are the best.

You’ve stuck with me all this way just to get a stolen punchline. Good old monkey mind.

Anyhow, I’ve circled around in my blogging orbit and communication has been reinstated. I really am sorry to have left it so long, but I’m finally speaking again.

And if you’ve been waiting anxiously with your fingers crossed….

Well I’m still here just sitting.

Only now I’m writing too.