Silent Mind

The late afternoon sun is slowly dropping in the Western sky, its mellow light slanting through the tangle of leaves and black limbs of the giant Oaks. The old Live Oaks are noble and silent. They are the masters here. Some are hundreds of years old and will undoubtedly be here after we are gone. A Mourning Dove is cooing nearby, and on a neighbor’s fence rail, in a shaft of sunlight, sits a black and white cat surveying its domain. The cat calmly looks your way, its green eyes taking note of your presence.

It has been a busy day, full of activity and tasks, but now there is silence, within and without. The mind is silent and open, with no center and no agenda. A silent mind is an empty mind. It is a mind that does not want anything. A silent mind is done with hope and fear, past and future. You are detached from the narrative, the self-image, which is allowed to come and go without dragging you along. This is the art of not knowing, of not touching the story of oneself.

There is tremendous beauty and power in this silence. It is the power of life itself, of the giant Oaks, the sky and clouds turning pink. It is the power of acceptance of what is, of meeting yourself as you are, no matter what you are feeling, without following or rejecting. There is a knowing without knowing that you are the world and the world is you, and in this presence is a mysterious healing of the world.

Shadows are replacing the sunshine, and the day is cooling quickly. As you gather your things and get ready to go home, you see that your friend, the cat, has departed in silence.

Reminder: I will be facillitating a Zoom talk/dialogue at Springwater Center for Meditative Inquiry, next Saturday, March 8, at 1:30 ET. Zoom ink & more info on the Springwater Calendar later this week: www.springwatercenter.org