World Map
(land separated by seas & oceans)
Mind in Meditation
(find the gap between thoughts)
Solar System
(distance between sun & planets)


Map the Gap


Mediterran Sea


Bering Sea


Sun, Earth, Moon


Andromeda Galaxy
2.5 million light years away


Swami Chinmayananda
(1916-1993)


Maps of the Mind (1981)
by Charles Hampden-Turner


Corpus Hypercubus (1954)
by Salvador Dalí

Atlantic Ocean separates
Americas from Europe & Africa,
Pacific Ocean separates
Americas from Asia & Australia.

Mediterranean Sea separates
Europe from Africa,
Bering Sea separates Russia
from Alaska and Canada.

Moon is quarter million
miles from the Earth,
that's 93 million
miles from the Sun.

Neptune is 2.8 billion
miles from the Sun,
Milky Way is 2.5 million
light-years from Andromeda.

These are gaps in space
between land masses on Earth,
distance between Sun and planets,
and light-years between galaxies.

How about gaps in time?
Tick-tocks of the clock
from midnight to noon,
from sunrise to sunset.

Change of the four seasons,
calendar demarcating New Year,
the decades, centuries, millennia—
Big Bang & birth of the universe.

The gap that's more elusive
is the gap between thoughts that
Swami Chinmayananda tells students
to catch when seeking enlightenment.

Unlike explorers finding new lands,
this gap is not in horizontal space,
but a vertical ascent beyond time
to a dimension of joy & wonder—

like the man breaking through his
old hemisphere to see new vistas
or Dalí's Corpus Hypercubus—
Christ's Cross in 5th dimension.

It's Beethoven's Fifth—
dun dun dun DUN!
telling us to wake up
to the Great Spirit!

— Peter Y. Chou
     Mountain View, 2-2-2023
Alarm Clock
"tick-tock of time"


Sunrise


The Four Seasons
by Antonio Vivaldi (1720)


January 1: New Year Calendar


Big Bang: Birth of Universe
13.787 billion years old


"Man Poking Through"
Flammarion engraving (1888)


Beethoven's 5th Symphony


Prayer to the Great Spirit
by Cyrus E. Dallin (1909)
Boston Museum of Fine Arts