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Aug. 15, 2005 Hidden birds sing as cool and clear As a bamboo forest . Between swinging willows sunbeams glimmer Like golden threads. Clouds return to this calm valley. The winds carry the fragrance of almonds. By sitting alone all day long I clear my mind of a thousand thoughts. To speak of this is beyond our words; Only by sitting under the quiet forest Can we ever understand. - Fa Yen (885-958) Have you ever tried to describe a feeling or a moment in your life to someone? Poets do it all the time. Poets try to express a deep feeling, a vision, a emotional moment, in words. It’s very difficult. Putting into words, how you feel sitting under a “quiet forest,” is a difficult process. A quiet moment in your life is difficult to express in words. Words are not adequate sometimes. I have tried so many times to express a moment in my youth with mere words…impossible. Words cannot capture the smell of your girlfriend’s perfume or the first kiss of your life. Words cannot express how you really felt when you touched for the first time a woman’s breast…impossible. Can you put into words the quiet lake that you and your brother sat beside and cast a line into the water and lay on your backs staring at the puff of clouds above you? Or, can you express how you felt when you first experienced a typhoon or a tornado? “To speak of this is beyond our words; only by sitting under the quiet forest can we ever understand.” Words cannot capture every moment of our lives, nor can pictures. Only by sitting beneath a forest can we understand a forest. Only by experience the ravages of war, can we truly understand war. Only by experiencing the sharp whips of discrimination, can we understand discrimination. Hence, the saying, “Don’t judge me until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes,” is an undisputable truism. I have friends, who have to be doing something from the time they wake up until the time they go to bed. They cannot sit and have a quiet moment. They cannot stop and smell the roses. To them, sitting and chilling is punishment. To them, lying on the couch is laziness. At first, I judged them negatively for this kind of behavior; however, I was strongly chastised by them. In their minds, a Zen moment was trimming a tree, pulling weeds, or painting a fence. They had their quiet moments while working.
My Zen moments occur while listening to music, trying to write a poem, or lying on my back and watching the ceiling fan. I need external quiet in order to find an internal quiet. I now admire my busy friends. For they are much more disciplined than I. They are able to block out the noises of the world and find their solitude from within. Noise to them is the music of the world. I must learn.
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