Awareness Play

What is awareness?
You throw this zen koan at me
As we both gaze off
into our separate distances
You a rock
Me a mountain top
Immediately my mind starts to tumble
Tripping over itself
Reaching for fistfuls of awareness
But only coming up with empty air
And worrying about how to answer
correctly, cleverly, spiritually

And as we take turns
Batting this ping pong ball
Of awareness with
The flimsy paddles of our minds
We slowly start to descend into
Awareness
Just beyond the greasy grasp
of our cognition
That wants to
Identify it
Box it
Label it
Know it
Control it

All the while
The body simply sighs
Chuckling to itself
Drenched in spaciousness
Tingling with aliveness
Resting in the space
Beyond words
That is everything
And nothing
That is formlessness
And form
Comfortable in its knowing
That it is always
Awareness