Focus on the Water

Let your eye rest on the water.  Look deeply at the ripples.  See what comes....

It's a gift from stratofrog.  And it goosetails, for me, with an experience from long ago.  When I stood in the Ganges with Gandhi.  Well, not really.  But it was as Real as anything could be - when I experienced it.  I learned much wisdom.  In a very short span.  It occurred at a monastery over 30 years ago.   It was a great blessing.  And this photo, more than anything, provides the entry into that experience.

The monks had invited friends to join them at a workshop.   I knew them all, except for the presenter.  Part of the workshop involved making a list of spiritual stepping stones and wisdom people.  Then we chose one wisdom person with whom to have a conversation - an inner journey down a spiritual well to a place of meeting.  I closed my eyes, allowed myself to go down the inner well - mine was round, with stones all the way down, mossy in places, damp, cool, pleasant.  Immediately I found myself in the Ganges.  I now write my exact words of that experience, speaking to Gandhi:

I don't know quite how to begin.  I will fold my hands and bow to you - Gandiji....  It's very peaceful here - even though we are surrounded by others purifying themselves - washing together in the water.  I am so aware of the multitudes in this river. .. And yet we are peacefully alone too.  I have time to talk to you and you are gracious enough to share this time with me.  Pardon me, if I say one thing more about our surroundings.  I see now that is it so appropriate to put the bodies of the dead into the river along with the rest of us who bathe here.  But I realize as I say this too that you are supposed to be dead and I am supposed to be alive.  Yet we are here bathing together.  Somehow - in a way I cannot understand - everyone is in this river. 

Yes, my daughter.  You yourself have said so.

 ................. long pause..............

Why is it that I am unable to speak more to you?

Silence together, my daughter.

I didn't know I could go down and find silence together.

On earth, I fasted and kept silence one day a week.  Here we can do so always.... But we can share as often as you like.

Yes, I see that now.  We're all here together.  I'm so glad to be home.  My tears become part of this river too.  Drops of water which reflect.  But I can only see the reflections when they've fallen.  ~ But then they're gone ~ part of the river now.

 Just so, my daughter.

You say so little, Gandhi.  You have the gift of listening.  Do you think I will ever have it too.

..............Pause............
"In the stillness is the dancing"

(Like a soft echo in my mind, for a while now.)

You yourself have said it.  Follow my example.

Summary (afterward) - to myself:

I am afraid I may have missed my opportunity.  I had so much I wanted to say - like before you make a long distance call - but when you finally hear the voice - that's all you wanted to hear - just the voice, the comforting feeling of hearing the voice and remaining in its presence.

"In the stillness is the dancing"  ~  An allusion to a line from TS Eliot's Four Quartets:

"So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing." 

Now here's the thing.  Although I own a book, whose title rang in my mind, I knew the experience really referenced Eliot's words.  (I had purchased the book - for its title, you see.)  But there's more.  When I searched, just now, for a link to it, I found another book with almost the same title - a biography I didn't know existed.   So, why, you might ask, have I just linked to a biography I have never read?  Because it concerns a man I was yet to meet - at the same monastery - a man whose impact on me (and others) relates to the title of this blog.  A blog yet to be born.  A man yet to die.   A book yet to be written.  A profession I was yet to train for - which had never even entered my mind.   And yet... all that meaning was contained in my experience.  That.  And more, of course.


As TS Eliot writes: 

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.

This blog, like life, is a journey. We are on it together....