SepticPen ...

…William Blake

Glimpses of reality fade away,
as I slip into gentle sleep,
But what I see at the other end,
is just as sad and deserves a weep.

Sleepless night. I hear the leaves rustling in the trees outside my window. Its late , too late into the night. I decided to step outside and have a look at the clouds, half expecting a rain. The air turned still as I walked into the night. The trees fell silent. The turmoil inside was still there. I walked as a man worn down by the load of the world. I sat down at a place close to the trees. The voice inside wondered why the trees fell silent, and winds deserted me.

The heaviness inside was reminding of its existence every now and then. I looked at the sky and could see only a few stars. The moon must have been hid by a few clouds sharing a thought or two about taming the winds. The stars reminded me of the story about the astronomer:

In the shadow of the temple my friend and I saw a blind man sitting alone. And my friend said, "Behold the wisest man of our land."

Then I left my friend and approached the blind man and greeted him. And we conversed. After a while I said, "Forgive my question, but since when hast thou been blind?"

"From my birth," he answered.
Said I, "And what path of wisdom followest thou?"
Said he, "I am an astronomer."
Then he placed his hand upon his breast, saying, "I watch all these suns and moons and stars."

-- Kahlil Gibran

I wondered how many men like me came and sat near these trees over these years. I wondered what these trees thought about mankind. Man who walks by it frowning every day. man, with his endless problems. man with his need to reach some where, every time he walks. man the neurotic beast. man with his burden of listening to the incessant radio inside. Our pathetic little condition, our restlessness, our search, our unsatisfactoriness, our noise.

I was growing weary of the voice inside. If the the winds could carry our thoughts, I wonder if the trees would wish to hear them. The trees stood beside me full of green leaves. The trees stood very quietly, in all their purity, in all their dignity. The trees exist completely, utterly, simply fully. In their vastness you are to realize your own. In their quietness you are to recognize your your. In their purity you are to allow your own to surface.

The winds gently came wandering back after a while. I felt them running through my fingers, I could sense an affection in their touch. They made their way toward the trees. And then began the great discourse , the discourse the trees gave me. The tree sutta. A quiet discourse. In their endless rustling, and moving with the winds was a silence that made its way into me and awakened the stillness within. I sat there simply and fully listening to the tree. For in the absence of words, the voice within had nothing to judge, nothing to interpret. For the beginning of the listening to absence of words was the very end of the noise within. I sat there among the trees. A silence within listening to a silence throughout.

I know not how long I sat there. For in their grace and quietness was the forgetfulness of time. For then, I was one with the Trees. its Silence.

The trees speak to us all the time, it is when we choose to listen fully and quietly that the we are one with the tree, with its purity, its serenity, its quietness, and its vastness. And more importantly it is then that we are at one with The Wholeness of Life.

References:

• 1. Four Translations of the Kalama Sutta http://oaks.nvg.org/kalama.html
• 2. Kalama Sutta - The Buddha's Charter of Free Inquiry

Its funny how sometimes the songs you have been humming for years don’t really ‘speak’ to you all. But a time comes may be on the bus, or the tube, or a train, or a taxi u hear it and for the first time you actually listen to it…. And u realize something, something greater than the song , something which could not have been conveyed in words to you, and between the words of the lyrics it just erupts in you and floods u with its calmness.

Something Similar happened today:

It was a mid-summer afternoon, the heat was unbearable. And with the heat we all became very restless indeed. The class was nearing its end, the audience was hardly listening to the Instructor, everyone was talking and their minds whizzing in a million directions. Everyone was clearly frustrated not excluding me. The atmosphere outside became dark and windy.

We were starting to be relieved a little by the coolness offered to us by the winds. Sullen clouds are gathering fast over the black fringe of our small campus. Soon we were smelling the rising summer dust, and we knew it was raining. I stared at the dark clouds around us from the window. The winds were roaring and struggling among the branches like a wild beast tangled in a trap.

And the rains sang their song, the same lyrics that I had heard since I was a child, yet this time I listened to its roar, intimidating yet graceful. And after many years the rains decided for the first time to ‘speak’ to me….. There’s something about the rain that’s beyond this world. Though it is noisy yet it is as peaceful s silence. The noise of your mind just dissolves in the melodies of the song the rain sings.

Centuries have passed; poets and seers have sung hymns and poems praising the symphony of rain. Yet there is sacredness to rain which is not of thought, nor of a feeling that can be awakened by thought. This sacredness about the rains can’t be written down, it is no to be thought of. It is not recognizable by thought nor can it exploited by thought. Thoughts cannot generate it. But there was a Sacredness to the afternoon’s rain and every rain, which is untouched by any word or symbol. This cannot be communicated. But it is a fact. And I would like to take Krishnamurthi’s quote to describe what we had realized, “Like beauty, it cannot be seen through its opposite for it has no opposite”

Every one present there was filled up the immense peace of that indescribable sacredness.

-- Sachin Modeel