Wednesday, January 17, 2007

So watch out for Sundays!

Today I want to direct you once more to a beautiful blog called Meditation Photography. Here's a paragraph from a reflection posted on January 15 by the blog's author, Suresh Gundappa:
How to be patient, how to wait for things. They have lost all capacity to be inactive. They don’t know how to go on a holiday. Even if they go on a holiday they are more active than ever. More people have heart attacks on Sunday in the West than on any other day, because it is a holiday. And people are too occupied. The whole working week they think they will rest when the holiday comes, and when the holiday comes, they have a thousand and one things to do. Not that they have to do them, that they are needed, no, not at all; but they cannot live in rest. They cannot just lie down on the lawn and be with the earth. They cannot just sit silently under a tree and do no-thing. No, they will start doing a thousand and one things around the house. They will fix this and unfix that, they will open their car engines and start doing things to it. They will do something. But they will remain active.
Our meditative practice will teach us - train us - how to be still, how to wait, how to do nothing. Not only that, eventually our practice will teach us the value of these things. It's contercultural to value stillness, patience, deep rest. All the more reason why we need to be intentional in cultivating them.

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