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Today's
Meditation:
I think that I would be much more in tune with the
truth of this statement if there were more silence in my
life. As it stands, there are very few times when
I'm able to experience true silence deeply, and because of
that, I'm not nearly as able to reach the "deep
stillness" of which Shantidasa speaks. The few
times that I have been able to do so, though, have given
me a hint of the truth of which he speaks.
I've been fortunate enough to be able to do a lot of
hiking in the Grand Canyon during the off-season (I lived
and worked there for a year). During those hikes,
I've been able to experience a deep and profound silence,
one in which my thoughts have the chance to slow down and
relax a bit, in which I can take a deep breath and
actually hear that breath. And during those silences
I get a glimpse of the bigger picture of life, the
importance of just being as opposed to always doing, the
amazing miracles that surround us all the time.
Truth tends to be a relative term in our day-to-day lives,
for we constantly have to redefine our truths based on our
new realities-- new friends, new neighbors, new co-workers,
new bosses. But truth in the greater sense really is
unchanging, and we're never going to get close to it when
we talk about last night's TV show or yesterday's football
game. Those things may be interesting to talk about,
but such conversations contribute nothing to who we are
and how we live our lives.
If we never seek out silence, then we're choosing to keep
ourselves immersed in chatter-- noise that may sometimes be
useful and sometimes productive, but which in the final
analysis doesn't allow us to learn anything deep about
ourselves. When we find that silence, we must use it
to slow ourselves down, slow our thoughts down, relax and
let ourselves be and let the world be. Only then
will we start to get glimpses of what our lives are all
about on a deeper level, and only when we're able to see
that will we be able to begin our journey towards that
level.
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