We call him ‘slow’, but really Loris is just differently oriented in time.
He lives in deep time, but not in the way that you think — not in the past, but low down, near the centre, at the origin of the ten thousand things, where he dreams the rest of us into being.
His nature is non-local simultaneity and co-determinacy.
At once, two round, amber eyes blink open in the void, originating elements that coalesce into a fabric woven with stars.
A soft, liquid gaze, reflecting a glittering curvature.
In a pocket of humid Sumatran jungle, Loris reaches for a higher branch in the wondertree — a gesture that lasts from the start to the end.
Unhurried, he looks up at a metastable human arrangement. It is moving quickly, a turbulent slurry.
Audible only with the thin ears and not the thick ears, visible only with the dreaming-seeing, Loris observes a widening awareness emerging from thick strands of light and texture — blood and bone, sap, soil and stone, air and sea, metals stretched fine and thin, pulsing with electricity.
He sees patterns of colours in the cloud. We could understand them as the stacking of reality with increasing levels of encapsulation and abstraction. The human beings are divided, looking at them.
Loris is unworried; he knows that a momentary decohering from the totality is necessary to create diversity. Once being simply was, now it also reflects. Grief, ruin, and the apprenticeship with sorrow are giving rise to the seeming opposites: deep gratitude and love.
Of course, Loris, Arya Avalokiteshvara, sees beyond these polarities.
The dream people come and fetch the landsoul back from the deep cave. The totality recovers its lost parts and is restored to presence.
The Awareness looks down into the void from high up in the branches.
Loris is looking back, holding up the gift of a lotus flower.
Will we take the flower? Or will he bite and stop the heart?
Loris sees the future.
Along its infinite truncations, both occur.
Further reading
For those interested in exploring some of the language and symbolism in the poem, I have compiled a list of references.
Mythology, Animism & Jungian Psychology
von Franz, M.-L. (1995) Creation Myths. Boston: Shambhala.
Estés, C.P. (1998) Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. London: Rider.
Gaiman, N. (2018) Norse Mythology. London: Bloomsbury.
Harner, M.J. (1990) The Way of the Shaman. 10th anniversary ed., 1st Harper & Row pbk. ed. San Francisco: HarperOne.
Ingerman, S. (2011) Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self. New York: HarperOne.
Jung, C.G. (2002) The Earth Has a Soul: C.G. Jung on Nature, Technology & Modern Life. Edited by M. Sabini. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.
Weller, F. (2015) The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of renewal and the sacred work of grief. Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books.
Taoist Cosmogony, Buddhism & Zen
Ames, R.T., Hall, D.L., and Laozi (2004) Dao De Jing: Making this life significant; a philosophical translation. New York: Ballantine Books.
Le Guin, U.K., Laozi and Seaton, J.P. (2019) Tao Te Ching: A Book About the Way and the Power of the Way. Boulder: Shambhala.
Gyatso, T. (2016) Essence of the Heart Sutra: The Dalai Lama’s Heart of Wisdom Teachings [Audiobook]. Audible Studios. Available at: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Essence-of-the-Heart-Sutra-Audiobook/B01FIIO7R0.
Watts, A. (1989) The Way of Zen. 1. publ. in paperback. New York, NY: Vintage Books (Vintage spiritual classics).
Process-Oriented Psychology
Mindell, A. (2007) Earth-Based Psychology: Path Awareness from the Teachings of Don Juan, Richard Feynman, and Lao Tse. Portland: Lao Tse Press.
Mindell, A. (2013) Dance of the Ancient One: How the Universe Solves Personal and World Problems. Portland, Or.: Deep Democracy Exchange.
Mindell, A. (2014) Sitting in the Fire: Large Group Transformation Using Conflict and Diversity. 2nd edition. Florence: Deep Democracy Exchange.
Futurism & Science
Rees, M. (2021) On the Future: Prospects for Humanity. new paperback edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Rovelli, C., Segre, E. and Carnell, S. (2019) The Order of Time. London: Penguin.
Pilcher, H. (2022) What is a slow loris? Everything you need to know about this cute but venomous primate, BBC Science Focus Magazine. Available at: https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/slow-loris/.
