“Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and around and about me was the whole hoop of the world… I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit and the shapes of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the Sacred Hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as day light and as starlight and in the centre grew one almighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father,and I saw that it was holy.”
From the vision of Nicholas Black Elk (Lakota Holy Man: 1863 – 1950) . Black Elk was a famous wičháša wakȟáŋ (medicine man and holy man) and heyoka of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) who lived in the present-day United States, primarily South Dakota. He was a second cousin of the war chief Crazy Horse.
What is this world condition? Body is the world condition. And with body and form goes feeling, perception, consciousness, and all the activities throughout the world. The arising of form and the ceasing of form–everything that has been heard, sensed, and known, sought after and reached by the mind–all this is the embodied world, to be penetrated and realized.
Quoted from Samyutta Nikaya ((Saṃyutta Nikāya SN, “Connected Discourses” or “Kindred Sayings”) is a Buddhist scripture, the third of the five nikayas, or collections, in the Sutta Pitaka, which is one of the “three baskets” that compose the Pali Tipitaka of Theravada Buddhism. Because of the abbreviated way parts of the text are written, the total number of suttas is unclear.)
Editor’s Note: These vision quotes are favourites of mine that I have used in my classes over the years.