Unfolding with Ease...

This year, I am determined to be more unproductive. My goal is to do less and less – to move slower and slower until everything stops. I and the whole world will come to a sweet and silent stillness. And in this stillness, a great shout of joy will arise. We will all be free – free from the advice of ancient ages, free from the whining voices, free from the incessant objections of the responsible ones. 

In this new world, it will be abundantly clear that the bare branches of the winter trees are our teachers. In their daily dance of moving here and there, we will see once again the true meaning of our life. In the wind song of their being, we will hear God’s unmistakable voice. We will follow what appears before us – what had once been difficult will now unfold with ease.
                                                                                     ~ Hakuin Ekaku

I have been struggling with myself for sometime now. Part of me wants to write, part of me just lets go into the flow of each day. I wonder... If I take time to write, I love what I experience and I think it has value. Yet if I move through my day, moment by moment, enjoying whatever arises, I love that. And I know it has value.

Each day there are thoughts and feelings merging from the stillness and they long for expression. I brush them aside, using precious moments for other things. Who is to say which is more valuable? How do I determine in what way to spend my allotted time?

My writers' group encourages me to take time each day to write. This discipline of setting a time to put words to paper or a computer screen. I know how discipline works; I practice Yoga everyday. I meditate. In fact, if I don't, something just doesn't feel right.  

I tried to set a specific time to write and it feels so rigid and artificially imposed. But I recieved an email from a writer friend who is suggesting I make a date with myself ~ a specific day and time and place to go. I like that idea. It seems I need to allow this desire to write to become a practice like my Yoga and this may be the way for it to evolve. 

Maybe I just do it all and let whatever is here in this moment be as it is. Could is possibly be as simple as that? To follow whatever arises and "what has once been difficult will now unfold with ease."

Extraordinary Quietness

Meditation is to find out whether the brain, with all the activities, all its experiences, can be absolutely quiet. Not forced, because the moment you force, there is duality. 

The entity that says, 'I would like to have marvelous experiences, therefore I must force my brain to be quiet,' will never do it. 

But if you begin to inquire, observe, listen to all the movements of thought, its conditioning, its pursuits, its fears, its pleasures, watch how the brain operates, then you will see that the brain becomes extraordinarily quiet; that quietness is not sleep but is tremendously active and therefore quiet.

A big dynamo that is working perfectly hardly makes a sound; it is only when there is friction that there is noise.



Krishnamurti

I find this to be a wonderful image of a mind meditating. Often, we think of quiet as being inactive; but here Krishnamurti reminds us that the truly quiet mind is actually filled with activity. The only noise comes from friction.