In stillness the power of thought is clear, well-ordered and intelligent. Likewise in stillness the power of decision is reasonable, true and certain. To help this it is possible to cultivate tranquillity of mind.

The poet T.S. Eliot used evocative language for this. He said:

At the still point of the turning world.
and:
at the still point, there the dance is.

(T.S. Eliot – Four Quartets, Burnt Norton)

The world indeed is ever turning. The art in life is to discover the still point of the turning world. This is not empty or a void. There the dance is.

In the same work there is also the following passage:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

(T.S. Eliot – Four Quartets, Little Gidding)

When the mind does become completely still it is like coming back to ourselves, and knowing ourselves for the first time.

To the non-scientist the scientific world may seem to be totally incomprehensible. But to many of the great scientists the quality of simplicity is all important.

Einstein for example said:

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. We should not confuse the word ‘simple’ with ‘simplistic’. There are many so-called experts who specialise in complexity. It is difficult for anyone to understand what they say. The true expert knows the particular subject thoroughly but is able to explain it to anyone in a manner that is easily comprehensible. Such a person has attained simplicity but certainly could not be called simplistic.

There is a story which illustrates this:

There was a flock of crows. One of them was strong, clever and good looking, so they made him their leader. This king of the crows felt proud of his exploits, and looked down upon all other creatures.

One day a young swan appeared. The crows assembled around the swan and asked him if he knew about the great deeds of their king. He pleaded ignorance and wished to see their king.

The king crow appeared and asked the swan about different types of flight. The swan, in his simplicity, said that he knew only one style. The king crow then embarked on an exhibition of his hundred-and-one styles of flight. Having performed his acrobatics, he asked to see the art of the swan. The young swan took off in a graceful, gentle and natural flight and, as usual, increased his speed only gradually.

Since the crow was small and swift he flew fast, and realising that the swan was left behind, he came back to cheer him up. The swan gradually increased his speed, and it was not very long before the crow was tired and trembled, and eventually fell into the sea. The swan came down and rescued the crow and helped him back to his flock. The crow then became ashamed of his pride, and thanked the swan for his modesty and magnanimity.

The moral of the story is that the swan lived a natural life while the crow engaged himself in acrobatics and cleverness. The ultimate happiness goes to those who live a natural and simple life, rather than the clever and smart who waste energy in trifling pursuits.

An example of the sustaining power of love comes in a book called ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’. The author, Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) was a prisoner in Auschwitz and other concentration camps for three years during World War II, and the book contains a description of that time. In the context of the theme of the way of action, the action in this case was the simple and most basic one of all, namely staying alive.

This is an extract:

Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: ‘If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don’t know what is happening to us.’ That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honourable way – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfilment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, ‘The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.’

In front of me a man stumbled and those following him fell on top of him. The guard rushed over and used his whip on them all. Thus my thoughts were interrupted for a few minutes. But soon my soul found its way back from the prisoner’s existence to another world, and I resumed talk with my loved one: I asked her questions, and she answered; she questioned me in return, and I answered.

‘Stop!’ We had arrived at our work site. Everybody rushed into the dark hut in the hope of getting a fairly decent tool. Each prisoner got a spade or a pickaxe.

‘Can’t you hurry up, you pigs?’ Soon we had resumed the previous day’s positions in the ditch. The frozen ground cracked under the point of the pickaxes, and sparks flew. The men were silent, their brains numb.

My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn’t even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing – which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. ‘Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.’

The founder of this School, Leon MacLaren (1910-1994), was asked at a meeting about the right use of the mind in studying the scriptures.

The right use of the mind in relation to the scriptures, or indeed for that matter to anything else, is to fall quite still, attend to what is being spoken or shown or enacted, fully, with no idea about it at all; then the mind, being open and free, receives a true impression of what is being said or shown or enacted; and that being received simply and truly, the mind has been properly used. And in the case of the Upanishads, for example, or the Gita or the Christian scriptures, the Gospels, in any case like that, it’s the same, the mind quite still and let the words sound; reading them is no good, let the words sound, you can sound them out loud if you like, but let them sound without any pre-judgement or any notion that you know what they mean, anything of this kind, so the mind is quite open and free. That is the right use of the mind.

You see, if one comes to a meeting like this to sit here and address it, as one walks in one has no notion what is going to be said, not even what the first word is going to be. But you listen, and the speech comes sentence by sentence from the audience Ð that is why you recognise it, do you see that? You’re giving it, as it were it’s as though you were giving it to me Ð the speaker has simply to give you back what is your own, that’s all, that’s his job; so he has to listen, without any ideas whatever of what is going to be spoken.
Now like this, in all circumstances, that is the right use of the mind, to be totally receptive; then you will find the mind, from its own nature, responds to the situation. But that response is only possible because the mind has been quite still, quite open, and has received the words or the showing or the activity just as it appears this is most fruitful.

And that is the right use of the mind; it will show you, for example, that the people you think you know well, you don’t know well at all, because every time that they walk through the door they’re different, and this idea that they are always the same is something that the mind has been putting on them – it‘s not true. And if the mind is truly free and open, it will observe that every time the person who walks through the door is different, and it’s that you receive, that you respond to. It is very beautiful and very simple, but it does depend on having recourse to an inner stillness, which is always there, so that you can just attend, just that. And that is the right use of the mind, and you’ll find it very fruitful because it’s the need of the other person that brings forth from your mind what that person needs: you don’t need anything, you’ve got everything, so you’re all right.

(Meeting 3/5/1989)

The aphorism, ‘As a man thinketh in his heart so is he’, not only embraces the whole of a man’s being, but is so comprehensive as to reach out to every condition and circumstance of his life. A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.

As the plant springs from, and could not be without, the seed, so every act of a man springs from the hidden seeds of thought, and could not have appeared without them. This applies equally to those acts called ‘spontaneous’ and ‘unpremeditated’ as to those which are deliberately executed.

Act is the blossom of thought, and joy and suffering are its fruits; thus does a man garner in the sweet and bitter fruitage of his own husbandry . . . .

Man is made or unmade by himself; in the armoury of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself; he also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace. By the right choice and true application of thought, man ascends to the Divine Perfection; by the abuse and wrong application of thought, he descends below the level of the beast. Between these two extremes are all the grades of character, and man is their maker and master . . . .

As a being of Power, Intelligence, and Love, and the lord of his own thoughts, man holds the key to every situation, and contains within himself that transforming and regenerative agency by which he may make himself what he wills.

This passage speaks about the power of thought, either to bring about freedom or lack of freedom. The power of thought is indeed extraordinary. It can all too easily be taken for granted. Like any great power it should be intelligently and well used.

The circling or unnecessary thoughts that we have discussed, the day dreams, the fantasies, are all examples of the misuse of this power.

Shakespeare’s sonnets are a remarkable collection of poems and their essential theme is that of love.
This particular sonnet stresses the constancy of true love: It is not fickle or changing, but is constant and true (more…)

Is there one beauty shining in a million different forms or are there millions of different beauties?

Where is that beauty now? Is it not everywhere, all around us?

Plato taught that there is only one beauty, beauty absolute. Whenever we see or apprehend beauty it is this single absolute beauty that is being experienced in a particular form, whether that form is physical or subtle.

In Plato’s dialogue “The Symposium” Socrates relates how he was taught about beauty by Diotima, the wise lady of Mantinea:

He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes towards the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty – a nature which in the first place is everlasting, knowing not birth or death, growth or decay; secondly, not fair in one point of view or foul in another . . . but beauty absolute, existing with itself, simple, and everlasting, which is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other beautiful things, without itself suffering diminution, or increase, or any change.

This deeper appreciation of beauty is always available, it is only a question of remembering and awakening to it. In this way, it is possible to transcend the physical and experience beauty at an altogether finer level. In doing so we experience ourselves at a finer level also.

Everyone is free but thinks that they are bound. In fact all those things that bind them are the expression of their own ignorance. This is what everyone has to understand.

Here is an example. A special trick is used to catch monkeys. A round earthen pot with a small mouth is buried in the ground. Pieces of tasty food are put inside. When the monkeys smell them, they come close and put their hands inside and clutch the food, and then they cannot pull them out. The monkey doesn’t know that he can be free. He doesn’t want to release the piece of food, and yet wants to be free, so he cries, and can’t run away. At that moment the man appears from his hiding place and catches the monkey.

Most people who think that they are not free are acting like the monkey. They are holding on to something, maybe things of beauty, or fragrance. If only they could release their hold, they would be free, because in truth they are free.

– Shri Shantananda Sarswati