As a student, like many of us, I liked the reading of Henry David Thoro. A lot of his resonance sparked me, and we were copied in my common book, but there was one sentence that I did not register: “Every man is charged with making his life, even in his details, deserves meditation in his more height and decisive hour.” In my early twenties, my life revolves around work, movement and exploration: the contemplation of the elderly in their vibrating chairs.
Within a few years, the real life began to catch me: I have completed the first four years in the office; I fell in love with the woman I was married; I was lucky enough to see a lot of the world, from Cuba to Tibet. More importantly, my house was burned on the ground in a huge fire, and I lost not only all my possessions, but also handwritten notes that were the basis for my next three books. My future, in short, as much.
After weeks of sleep on the floor of a friend’s house, I made my way (based on the proposal of another friend) Pindecin ArmitageFour hours north along the California coast, south of the village of Lucia. I will try to forget that 15 years of Anglican education as a boy in England may leave me more interested in traditions than the far side of the world. What I found in the upper part of the mountain, at the moment when I came out of my car, was a radiant view of the Blue Pacific Ocean, and freedom from all distraction (there is no TV, no mobile phone, no internet), and the day it seems to last for several months. I can read, take walking, scrub messages, or the best in everything, do nothing at all. The highway roar was much lower, and for most of the day, even amid bird bells and bells, the main sound was live silence.
In short, I stumbled in the world of meditation. I never contemplated, as a writer in the place, I was often the movement, and the world intersects every week. But now I was only invited to sit and watch – not as I did when writing, but without end on the horizon at all. And not thinking, because my thoughts retreated as soon as I left the uproar behind it; Only to attend. To monitor the world, perhaps, as if it was the central Bible.
The results were very amazing. I am no longer angry at the friend I was exposed to when I traveled; He, too, may just try to find some peace in an exaggerated life. Memories rose – sometimes moving, exciting and sometimes educated – and they held me and possessed me because I could never when I was driving along the highway, busy with my next dates. Death itself does not seem very terrifying in a landscape of rocks, red wood and uninterrupted ocean – and in silence it seemed to be not underestimating. In short, the immediate joy was of the type that still exists even when things were difficult.
I was asked to provide only $ 30 per night, which covered hot lunch, hot showering, books, fruits, salads and bread, and the most scenes facing the heart along the beautiful coastal line that I discovered at all.
Perhaps it is not surprising, and perhaps, this is very soon, I booked a trailer on the hill for two weeks, then three. The monks were a great and unlimited company. They were confident of each of us would find what we need here, whatever the names we chose to give them. I could drive to a hotel salary phone along the highway if an emergency arose – but emergency situations are never common as we imagine. Of course, it was not easy to leave my mother or my wife who was lagging behind, but it was worth it if I could return them to a new, interested person and full of joy, and not the dispersed and proven spirit that they saw otherwise, complaining, “not now!”
At the same time, I could not ignore this sentence in Thoro, which I was reading more carefully now in silence: How do I make my life deserve what I saw and who I was – and I was not – in this space of meditation? I was not a monk and I will never be. My mother was calling for the company after the sudden death of her husband; My loved ones in Japan needed emotional and financial support; I had to pay bills.
Maybe I can try to reshape my life a little in light of what I saw in silence? I surprised both my sweetheart, by moving to Japan and a small two -room apartment, crowded with her and her 12 -year -old son and her 10 -year -old daughter; I realized, as Thoro mentioned, “The man is rich in proportion to the things that he could leave alone.” In this narrow space, I would have become the luxury of living without a car or a large house, free of persistent deviations. I began to capture some wise writers in the Western tradition – Maester Eckhart, Etie Hellsum – is no longer convinced that Sufis or Buddhists have a monopoly of wisdom. I decided to try to retreat for three days every season, simply to purify my head, a psychological root in relation to what I love.
In addition, of course, to get a perspective around the world and my life in it, I could not see it in the midst of all turmoil. Some friends run every day, or swim, for the same reason; Some cooking, sewing or golf. Almost any practice that allows you to open the space in your day and your head seems invaluable, especially since the world is accelerating, but it has been spending three days and nights in anything I must do. Even on the holiday, I usually walk with my plans.
With the passage of years – there were approximately 34 of them now, and more than 100 haven – the nature of my days began to be silent. It was not limited to bringing silence those who cared about him near me – and more clearly – more than it might be in the same room; It also transformed strangers along the monastery path into reliable friends. We were all here for a common purpose, and it was not usually a text, a teacher, or even a doctrine; It was just a human longing (or hint). I have been close to the monks, a talented and friendly group of scholars, musicians, artists and chemists; I realized that I had a contact with everyone in silence – even if I did not know next to their jobs or backgrounds – which I rarely met with people along a crowded berth.
I came to understand what Thoro knew, like all reflections: the goal of being alone is to be able to give more to others and be a more useful member in society. “I am not a hermit, of course,” he wrote in “Waldin”; “I think I love society as much as I love society.” I did not ask anyone to go to my own retreat, but I sometimes reminded friends that three days of distraction could clarify their lives. Those who spent time in silence were not surprised when I made it clear that he was alone in the calm ring that paid me, at the age of 42, to marry.
I never regret my life in the world, and I draw its movements and the explosion of the possibilities that our ancestors did not imagine. But I hope that I will not stop returning to my friends in the Arametag; Sometimes, I stayed with the monks in their box, there is a vision that their entire lives are hard and continuous activity to ensure their guests can enjoy absolute peace. I can’t imagine a more important investment.
One day, I was making a clean, clean trailer, joining all of its surface and wiping the pelvis down to shine – as I rarely do at home – when I noticed something that stayed with me (it does not seem to be trivial details in silence). I had to press only one drop of dishwashing liquid in a cup of water and turn blue. It does not take much to transform life.
Pico Air is the author of the book “”Smile artAnd the nextAFLAME: Learning from Silence“