Stillness

Annie Dillard, a celebrated author, died a few days ago. One of her essays is about a neighbor who was teaching a stone to talk. She titled her essay Teaching a Stone to Talk.

Her point was that nature is talking to us, or I would say teaching us to hear its stillness. What if we could hear the teaching of the stone, the river, the mountain? We would hear silence, feel stillness. We would see beauty. The perfectly smooth river stone is polished by the river and other stones, just as we are polished and refined by life. It is also teaching us of change and impermanence.

What is there to fear in finding stillness within? Realizing there is no fixed and substantial self, we still have preferences, experience comfort and discomfort, all aspects of being human. In sitting meditation we have the immediate opportunity to realize for ourselves the being aspect of human being, rather than just the one who’s always doing. Just being, where quiet, stillness and peace of mind exist. When we experience just being, eventually what follows is being and equanimity within the doing, the stillness within the apparent chaos around us.