Elder’s Rest

I haven’t even yet finished my cup of tea before morning meditation, and I’ve already solved a work issue with a colleague, planned treatment with a vet, and spoken with a friend. Although it might sound like a hectic day, the morning is actually very quiet. There is nobody around. It’s very early and all these people are most likely still asleep.

Those who tried to spend a while by themselves in silence will immediately know what I am talking about—the mind stimulating itself with imagined situations, conversations, and problems. When this happens again during the meditation session, a thought shows up: “Wait! Why am I talking? With whom? Has someone asked me anything?” I can’t help but chuckle at myself with both amusement and relief when I realize that no one asked me a single thing. Even though I knew this very well in theory, the mind needs its own time to get it. On that day, realizing more than ever the futility of inner drama, in these questions I found rest.

I again remembered this moment recently as I was reading some of the sayings of the Desert Mothers and Fathers. They were Christian nuns and monks who dwelled primarily in the deserts of Egypt. Their days were fully devoted to charity, labor, prayer, solitude, and silence. One of their sayings has resonated with me, perhaps because it reminds me of my own questions. Respecting the Buddhist and Christian traditions as different paths and having a very limited knowledge of the latter, I can’t speak about the meaning of the saying for Christian practitioners. What follows are simply my own ways of relating to words that I find to be inspiring, inevitably colored by my experience of the Buddhist path. The saying goes like this:

Whether in a remote place or a bustling city, what it would be like to genuinely live the elder’s advice for an hour, a day, or even a lifetime?

While sitting on the cushion, I noticed that various worries tend to manifest as imaginary conversations. I don’t know if that’s the case for everyone, but taking into account that interactions with others lie at the core of human nature, I wouldn’t be surprised. This type of internal dialogue seems to be much more reactive and repetitive when compared to other kinds of the mind’s content. It is perhaps why asking “Has someone asked me anything?” can have such a transformative effect on a meditation session. It doesn’t push inner conversations away but rather reveals their futility in an open, light-hearted manner. Then, they naturally lose energy.

As I’ve been lately playing around with the meditation style based on following the breath, this comes up yet again. A more general “What for?” question reveals itself when my mind doesn’t want to stay on the breath, in grosser as well as in subtler ways. One way to work with restlessness is to simply make a relaxed but diligent resolve to return to a meditation object over and over again. That’s certainly an important part of the process. However, I find taking a step back and looking at “What for?” much more powerful in my experience at this point. Because really, what is clinging to the fleeting noise good for? What will be the consequences of feeding it even more? Can thinking through imagined scenarios change anything for real right now? It is hard for distractions to take hold of a mind imbued with these questions.

They can become much more than a meditation tool, though. In “Has someone asked me anything?”, I hear an invitation to enter a conversation from a place of listening rather than that of agenda, whether it’s an actual dialogue or when understood as a metaphor for interaction with any life situation. There’s freshness and curiosity to it. Meeting a person or a situation with a fixed idea about how it will go or even attempting to gain control over everything sounds really boring, if not harmful. Besides, it’s not realistic. Things rarely go as we imagine, don’t they? It’s much more interesting to enter with an open mind and heart, curious and fresh, and even with some trust.

This can also have such a positive impact on others. Constantly reminding someone of their past through our expectations can hinder their sincere efforts to transform their tendencies. Moreover, so much harm could be prevented by following the elder’s simple advice. In my whole life, I haven’t come across anyone who would ask me to judge and comment on their life behind their back. Yet, I see people causing trouble to themselves and others through speech, not only in this manner but also in myriad other ways.

So indeed, silence is often a gift and speech is often useless or harmful. It can also be vice versa, though! True silence is alive and never indifferent. It is not the dead cold of unwillingness to feel, to connect, to care. On some occasions, we may be invited to speak first, perhaps not by a person, but by a situation. Then, we ask “How are you?” or “Do you need anything?”

And there’s much more to it. Imagine a way of life where there would be no need to seek approval or prove oneself, either internally or through actual dialogues. Instead, we would only invest energy into genuine heart-to-heart conversations, and rest in silence in between them. That, to me, sounds like an enormous relief.

Even though external solitude may be helpful at times, ultimately there’s no need to move to a desert or a distant mountain. The most important place to realize this in is one’s own heart and mind.

elder’s rest
nothing but the sound
of shifting sands