Emerald Rivers

By David Crow

I dreamed the world was a garden, a fragrant forest, a windswept prairie, a blossoming grotto floating in the folds of time. Sunlight roared across the sky, leaving trails of song like chimes announcing the cycles of the day. Gossamer threads hung from shimmering trees, tracing patterns of mysterious perfection among the layered leaves. Travertine pools of champagne waters cascaded off the earth’s verdant edge into the wonders of a shining firmament.

Emerald rivers of space flowed through cloud canyons, as opalescent archangels singing hymns of unfathomable compassion descended in majestic spirals. The moon’s briny froth swirled among glistening sculptures of black glass, while beneath the waves the ocean’s creatures murmured in the depths of our heavy-lidded slumber.

Such a short time it has been, since we fell from the secret sky, through the gate of stars, into the seed palace. Emerging from the temple well, two snakes greeted our arrival, their entwined shadows dancing across the altar of fertility. Anointed with dew of roses, the queen’s orchid beckoned with hypnotic pulsations, promising refuge in its amniotic warmth. Her breasts sparkled with the riches of nourishing love as she reclined, languorous, omniscient, and soft. Adorned with eyes of truth, she cast the sublime net of enchantment; even the holy succumbed to her intoxicating satin musk and liquid sighs. Her legs, an open horizon of longing, wove in serpentine pleasure, grasping her helpless prey in succulent anemone tentacles of passion, as she devoured the cosmos in orgasmic abandon. How could we, in our fleshless vulnerability, avoid her flower of rebirth, its folded lips, like hands in prayer, holding us within the embrace of life?

I dreamed that the Bodhisattvas were weeping, as our breath evaporated and the skies revolved, silvery strands of midnight pearl magically appearing across our fragile silhouettes, the carved flesh of lifetimes disappearing into nothingness, bones dissolving into blowing sand. What could I do, but gather their tears in a holy vessel, wash the blindness from my eyes, and take flight on radiant wings of ecstatic beatitude?

In the silent shrine of cathedral mountains, my mind opened its petals of exquisite awareness, revealing inherent purity. The barriers between worlds became thin as glass, and more transparent. I saw the treasurehouses of earth and sky lying open, awaiting those who, in their innocence, cherish others. From the weathered stones came echoes of prayers uttered by the ancients, calling us to remembrance that our hearts will be weighed against a feather.

David Crow, LAc is one of the world’s foremost experts and leading speakers in the field of botanical medicine and grassroots healthcare. He is a master herbalist, aromatherapist, and acupuncturist with over 30 years experience and is an expert in the Ayurvedic and Chinese medical systems.

David is a renowned author, a poet and is the founding director of Floracopeia Aromatic Treasures. Floracopeia was created as a way to help preserve and promote the use of botanical medicines as solutions to solving numerous interrelated global problems: lack of healthcare, poverty, environmental destruction, and loss of ethnobotanical knowledge.

David has presented his vision of grassroots healthcare, preservation of botanical medicines and the use of plants for ecological restoration to hundreds of audiences, ranging from small private groups to conferences and lecture halls to a panel discussion with the Dalai Lama broadcast internationally to millions of viewers. Through his visionary synthesis of medicine, ecology, and spirituality, he has helped transform the lives of thousands. Click here to visit David’s website, Floracopeia.

In 1987, David journeyed to Nepal in search of teachings in Tibetan medicine and Buddhist meditation. For the next 10 years, he studied with many teachers. Using his newfound knowledge, Crow opened a clinic in Kathmandu and another in a small mountain village, where he treated beggars from the street as well as high abbots of monasteries. In Search of the Medicine Buddha interweaves medical teachings with insights into Tibetan Buddhism, evoking the beauty and wonder of a faraway land.