If Lao Tzu and Ruysbroeck were to live in our age they would offer the
following advice. “Love silence”, they would say. “Develop your
sense of wonder. See beyond symbols. Immerse yourself in being. Seek your
deepest Image.” And this is what their suggestions mean in simple terms.
Make sure that you have moments of silence every day. At times these moments may come naturally. At times you have to create them, to make room for them. Take a stroll in a park. Sit on the grass in your back garden. Curl up before a winter’s fire. Wherever it is, or during whatever time of the day, switch off noise both inside and outside of yourself, as far as you can. Just be quiet and enjoy, savour, the beauty of silence. It will become your favourite music.
Elected Silence, sing to me
and beat upon my whorled ear.
Pipe me to pastures still and be
the music that I care to hear. (Gerard Manley Hopkins )
In the beginning you may feel uncomfortable. The noise of the day, unresolved feelings, hopes and worries assault you. Do not panic. Just let them ebb away. If you simply practice tso-wang, “sitting in silence” (see chapter two), your mind will become still and clear. You will love the sensation. You are preparing yourself for states of deeper awareness.
Having drunk of silence, open your mind to wonder. Begin to notice how beautiful created things are; and how complex, how mysterious. Never hurry when you look at things in this way. Take your time while you observe and admire every detail. Think of Chuang Tzu at Pu river studying a turtle. Select something from your own surroundings. Notice its features. Remember, perhaps, new knowledge about it that you have learned in scientific reports. Take it in. Digest it. Allow yourself to be surprised.
After having acquired some practice in thus being “spellbound”, turn your attention to people. Watch a particular person. Try to understand him or her. Abstain from making moral judgements but notice what a marvel every human person is; however small or however old. The time will come that you will want to reach out to deeper mysteries.
Become aware of the fact that everything you notice has the quality of being a symbol. You have to learn to see beyond symbols. Perhaps you may want to start with trees. Remember the Chinese stories about them (chapter three). Observe a tree’s dynamic energy; the strength of its stem, the tenderness of its leaves. See with your mental eye how Tao expresses itself in all those ways. Don’t look only at tall, majestic, perfect trees. Observe trees that are gnarled, twisted, bent; with branches lopped off and scars on their bark. Become aware of the same life force irrepressibly popping up in a myriad forms.
Turn your attention to other things; to plants, animals, people. What can you learn from them about the One, about the Ultimate Reality in which they all share? You will feel a longing to belong more closely; to be a conscious part of its overwhelming power, of
—the one interior life
in which all beings live with God,
themselves are God, existing in the mighty whole,
as indistinguishable as the cloudless East
at noon is from the cloudless West,
when all the hemisphere is one cerulean blue. (William Wordsworth)
The time for you has then come to plunge even deeper into the secrets of nature. For this you have to let yourself go. Being aware of the unspeakable Reality surrounding you, immerse yourself in its being. Think of the image of water, so aptly described by the Chinese masters (chapter four). Admire the flow of the One in all things. Feel how it flows in yourself. Enjoy the thrill. Be happy to be part of it; even when it swirls and eddies mysteriously in ways you had not expected.
Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.
That fountain is
there among its scalloped
green and grey stones.
It is still there and
always there
with its quiet song and strange power to spring in us,
up
and out through the rock. (Denise Levertov)
Understanding the flow in nature, make up your mind to respect it. Decide to act according to the principle of wu wei “non-doing” (see chapter four). It will give you a mastery of things by not going against the grain. You will not break your body but listen to what it is saying to you. You will not weary yourself doing things at the wrong time in the wrong way. You have discovered the dance of nature and will want to remain in step with its music.
Who sets the tune? Who is the Lord of the Dance? Whoever he or she is, realize you can know the Person from yourself. You are made in that Person’s Image. Your individuality hangs in that person; flows outwards from that Person (chapter five). The more you probe your deepest self, the more you have an inkling of what he or she must be like. That ultimate Reality, the One, must at least be able to know, to love, to communicate, as you can. The only difference, you will realize, is that he or she can do so more overwhelmingly and completely than you.
Recognizing the Person will give new dimensions to your inner experience. Your silence will never be lonely. Your wonder can become a conversation. Seeing beyond symbols you start discerning a Face. Your trust of nature, your harmony with its ways, turns into an act of loving surrender. Your respect for yourself begins to engender a longing for ever closer intimacy with the Person within you.