Repetition…..

(A comment from a old friend who has recently begun reading my backlog of essay’s, caused me to search through them to find the one she identified as her “favorite”…that search produced a recognition of just how much I repeat myself. That of course caused me a bit of embarrassment, in that I am sure a truly good writer does not have such a habit as the one I have acquired. The reason I repeat myself so much, seems obvious to me now, having uncovered the sweetness of silence…it is all that I wish to engage in…but is that reason enough to continually put the same offering in front of you, over and over? For that reason, I hesitate to post this one as it too, is merely repeating what has already been said… So far, I do not have a book in me…and do not seem to have a writing style other than essays, so I don’t know quite how to fix the problem, or even if it is a problem…

That said I offer this one because I invested in it, perhaps between now and the next one I will have stumbled upon a solution.)

Having finally found a job, and preparing to return to work, I look back over the last 2 years and nine months of unemployment and the subsequent penury that has provided me with…and I am stunned at how much I would prefer my life to continue as it is.

When joblessness first began, I had no debt and significant life savings and I believed unemployment would be at most a limited experience, sort of like a summer break or a tiny eddy in a constantly moving stream.

I had long ago set to rest the need for constant companionship and stimulation, but this long period of retreat developed in me a strong taste for solitude, and an even stronger commitment to it. Not long ago I read a wonderful book, The Cave in the Snow, chronicling the life and circumstances of the first Western Buddhist nun who took her vows in the early 70’s and subsequently spent 12 years in a tiny, and I do mean tiny…as in touch both sides with your outstretched arms…tiny, cave.

I recognized her solitude and mine as the same basic impulse, hers was formal, and of course, recognized as not only necessary but lauded and supported by the culture that gave rise to the most spiritualized human expression of recorded history, that of Tibetan Buddhist’s, and thus was a revered and acknowledged form of existence.

Conversely, to spend almost three years in near total solitude in a small house in the middle of one of the largest cities in America is not only viewed with suspicion, but also actively derided as a valid choice. And of course this is not my first rodeo, with respect to “retreat”, in between wall-eyed crazy and the start of therapy I took a year off. Then I devoted myself to 15 years of standing alone on a ladder painting murals. Then another couple of years, in between the end of my business and the start of the “daily grind” once more, and then this one, of being caught in an economic tsunami and losing the opportunity to work no matter how hard or how often I looked for a job, it wasn’t to be had.

In days gone by, I often felt a form of shame about the ways I spent my time, in a culture where outer achievement is a very active form of idolatry, choices like mine are not only suspect but also actively frowned upon. And yet, from the perspective of this new height, I am so grateful for the path my life has taken, that I would symbolically kiss the ground if it would somehow demonstrate my bone deep gratitude.

I have, most assuredly, traveled the path less trod. There is only my sister left of my original family to tsk, tsk, and shake her head at the way my life unfolds and the “laziness” that, she believes, must surely motivate my every waking moment.

But here is my vantage point about the process I have so long been engaged in…let’s start with this…

It has been a very long time since I subscribed to the “new age” notion that our thoughts produce our external reality. I have come to view that notion as my Teacher does, that the Outer is a matter of Karmic obligation and/or Karmic opportunity, and the Inner is the only realm of potential total mastery and the freedom that mastery provides. How else could we possibly understand the decades of daily torture endured by many of the monks and nuns of Tibet’s rich spiritual history, who, once freed from their prisons, were overflowing with a heart of gratitude, fortitude, charity, and kindness toward the very ones who caused so much agony for so long a time? To subscribe to the notion that they “manifested” their way into prison, is to denounce their great sacrifices that serve so elegantly and eloquently the necessity of humanity’s need to awaken, in this time of elevated pressure for survival. A mind who survives and even thrives under that kind of treatment, becomes a quiet pool of energetic transmission, and a much needed source of the Silence that might serve to save humanity and pull us all back from the brink.

I, of course, may only speak to my own life’s evolution and understanding. But I know without doubt, that the many evolutions of increasingly deeper levels of solitude that I have been fortunate enough to have either thrust upon me, or chosen by dent of emotional need were a necessity of the highest order.

There are no visual, emotional, or spiritual fireworks that have laid themselves upon my awareness in these cyclic evolutions of my ability to serve the needs of the virtue of Sacrifice, in my very small way. No one has gotten up out of a wheelchair and walked, no one has spoken in tongues, no one has directed me from a burning bush…and yet, the Silence of Mind that is now accessible to me is the greatest gift that has ever crossed my path...or I suspect, ever will…

Some years back there was a movie starring Meg Ryan and Nicholas Cage, titled The City of Angels, it told the story of a cardiac surgeon and her sudden capacity to see the angel of death who came to take her patient from his life, and into the next. As the movie unfolds, and the principal characters are teaching each other about their respective lives, and before Meg understands that Nicholas is an angel, he asks her while in the market one day, to describe for him, the taste of a pear.

She is self conscious and a little shy…and she voices her curiosity about why he doesn’t already know what a pear tastes like, but at his urging she bends to his desire and attempts to explain to this man/angel the simple pleasures of a pear. She tells him it is “sweet and kind of grainy” in a final attempt to express it more clearly she says…”sort of like sweet sand”.

I can understand her discomfort at trying to put into words an idea, in her case a taste, which if the listener has no frame of reference for can’t truly be described.

To breathe into a silent mind is like the strong but somehow equally gentle hug you have waited all your life for, like the sighting of the beaming sweep of a lighthouse over the tossing waves of a storm – and the promise of rescue it provides, it is what it must be like to taste a ripe pear for the very first time…

To call it Home, is right – but not adequate. To describe it as Peaceful is accurate – but not deep enough. To assign it to the emotional category of Joy is truthful – but not expressive enough. To think of it as a much-needed respite is certainly precise – but does not really hit the mark. To say it is Perfect is of course it’s nature – but what does that mean to a world of people who live in and through the chattering of the conditioned mind, a state of mind whose only real capacity is to grasp or to reject.

The Bible and all other respected sages of ages gone by…say that “dying” before your physical death is required to reach the Silence. The self that thinks repetitively and compulsively, the personal self, must be laid aside if Silence will have entry into any given life. And I can tell you without hesitation you would hold the sword yourself, if you knew how fulfilling the Silence truly is.

I know without a shadow of a doubt that if I had not had these periods of decidedly, (in the Western world), unconventional stretches of solitude…I would not have been capable of experiencing this most prized of understandings. Nothing I have ever encountered, acquired, heard about, seen, touched, or tasted even remotely compares.

I suppose I could restate the wisdom of the Buddha, for you…

The Buddha said that all is “dukkha”. Dukkha is a Sanskrit word that was first brought to India by the ancient Aryans, a nomadic horse and cattle breeding people. Kkha was originally the word for hole, specifically an axle hole in the cart of a traveling ox drawn vehicle, “du” and “su” as prefixes were respectively bad and good. Thus dukkha originally meant a bad axle hole, but over time and through use it began to be more and more associated with a potter’s wheel, thus dukkha was often compared to a wheel that would screech as it was spun around, and did not turn smoothly.

The opposite of dukkha was the term sukkha, which brought to mind a potter's wheel that turned smoothly and noiselessly. Although dukkha is often translated as "suffering", its philosophical meaning is more analogous to "disquietude" as in the condition of being disturbed.

The conditioned mind, run rampant, is the source of the Buddha’s recognition that all that the mind is normally capable of perceiving is “dukkha” or disquietude. If the mind you find yourself living in, is not as disturb as the mind I came up out of childhood with, you may not face the seven levels of hell that I have navigated through, and in that, I celebrate your escape…but even so, disquietude is not the heaven you so richly deserve.

Thoreau said….“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

A relatively sane mind is still a mind that will go to the grave with its song still unsung.

There have been those in recorded history who popped up out of the conditioned mind like toast out of a Hamilton Beach Toaster, like Saul on the road to Damascus who forevermore become Paul. But most of us are not that lucky…I know that solitude was the tilling of the soil that was an absolute necessity for me, and which is why I would prefer to live my life of quietness, rather than return to the empty busyness the world so embraces.

I know also that willingness plays a large role, to become a servant of Sacrifice is to become willing to make yourself sacred for a higher purpose, and that purpose of course, is to inspire others to reach for the Silence that is their rightful home as well.

Patience is key, stillness is required, beliefs must be laid aside, turning away from the seductiveness of achievement, accomplishment, and outer appearances will aid and support, but ultimately only grace will cause the path to arise…even as the foot descends upon empty air.

In truth, I know only this one thing…Silence is the only experience that has ever occurred in my life that would be worth any price required. I cannot think of anything I would withhold from it, including the remainder of my days.

I suppose I should turn to the wise ones for something to leave you with…

Confucius

“Silence is the true friend that never betrays.”

Kahlil Gibran

“Your heart knows in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.”

Rumi

“Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.”

Rabindranath Tagore

“Man goes into the noisy crowd to drown his own clamoring for silence.”

Thomas Carlyle

“Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.”

Arabian Proverb

“The tree of silence bears the fruit of peace.”

Sri Sathya Sai Baba

“You can hear the footsteps of God when silence reigns in the mind.”

Menander of Athens

“Nothing is more useful than silence.”

Ahhhhh well, I suppose I should stop now…..

Adayre R. Miller

3/3/11

photo courtesy of Britton B and flickr photo sharing, to see more of this artist’s work follow this link…www.flickr.com/photos/23741224@N02/2280220026/