The Buddha’s Fire Sermon is one of the most compelling and profound poetic instructions ever given.

“Friends, all is burning,” it begins.

Contemplating the word ”all,” what I first automatically picture the world outside myself.   There is plenty of burning to contemplate out there, forms of combustion driven by the human mind.

But what the Buddha means is the experiential world, as he goes on to explain, sense door by sense door, in the remaining body of the Fire Sermon.  The world of our senses and perceptions is all we will ever know and strictly speaking from this perspective there is no outer world.

This morning I’m attempting that flip of perception, dropping out of dualism.   Sitting in the panorama of senses and mind, a panorama of glittering change, like fire.