Silence

I took the opportunity today to have another look at a book by Deng Ming-Dao called "Everyday Tao" and I happened upon an entry entitled "Silence".

Silence is not something that happens easily in this modern world of ours. We listen to the radio, watch the TV, talk to others; even when we're walking down the road, there is precious little silence with all the traffic that is around. Even in the countryside, we can often still hear the noise of our modern world in the distance. We seem to be existing in a never-ending stream of noise; the only thing that changes is how loud the noise is. This is very exhausting and can prevent us from making contact with the Tao.

Deng Ming-Dao suggests that we just try to be very quiet for just a second, for a minute, for a few minutes, and then gradually try to increase this time, little by little through practice. We are searching for stillness, for that silence that is beyond the gods. So, take a pause from reading this blog post, and just try to be very quiet for a few moments.

How did that go? How did it feel? Deng Ming-Dao quotes somebody as saying that beyond the gods is silence and that silence can be viewed as Tao. For however long you managed to preserve that silence, that sense of quietness, that is when you touched Tao, all by yourself. There were no priests, no gurus, no leaders, no doctrine/dogma - just you! But remember, this is not a competition as to who can be quiet for longest, this is just about you.

There is a christian hymn that contains the line "a still small voice of calm" and this feeling is close to what we're looking for here, but we need to move beyond the voice, to silence it and embrace the stillness.

Keep trying this every time you get the opportunity; it will not be easy, but with practice we can touch Tao and when we do we may truly come to understand that old saying "silence is golden".

Gain or loss: which one hurts?

So here we are in November 2006; it's not long now until the end of another year. I was having another dive into my favourite copy of the Tao Te Ching and I read part of Ch.44 which struck a chord with me:

Gain or loss: which one hurts?

In November 2005, I left a job that was causing me high levels of stress to the point that it was making me ill both physically and mentally. And yet in September 2004, I was highly delighted to gain this job; it was something that I had worked towards for a number of years, a job which I had longed to do, something that I felt was just right for me. Once I was doing the job, I began to have misgivings but put these down to nerves at doing something completely new and that everything would settle down in time. In the end, due partly to a complete lack of adequate support, I felt that I had no option but to leave the 'job of my dreams'.

I had gained something and it hurt - a lot. I lost something and that hurt too, but less so after the initial 'lightening strike' feeling. What did I lose? An illusion, a much longed-for dream had to be given up, abandoned, and that's not an easy thing, I am here to tell you. Sometimes we can work very hard for goals, believing them to be the ones that we want/need only to find that things don't work out the way we expected them to, and perhaps they never would have or perhaps, they might have if circumstances/people had been different.

I have talked before about the pursuit of happiness; perhaps happiness will come to us if we don't chase it so hard. Perhaps it's the same with dreams; perhaps we need to be aware of what we are really looking for before we go and look for it.