I was looking out over the vast valley this chilly morning, the high peaks covered in fresh snow, and there was a moment of expansion. Perspective, perhaps. How easy it is to get caught in our own little world, to fixate on pain and discomfort.
Standing there staring into the immense space created by sky and mountain, its not only laughable but embarrassing that one would waste a precious instant complaining about an injustice, an unfulfilled desire, an unwanted intrusion. How insignificant these phenomena seem in comparison to the utter stillness created by the forces of nature. I decided to ally with the stillness, instead of the chatter.
And what occurred is that I realized this: we are all doing this same thing. We all have our own version of pain and woe, some more, some less. So merging with the vastness, I sent some of that stillness to those in need. To parents without jobs, to farmers without water, to women in Afghanistan, to children in Darfur, to patients in hospitals, to people everywhere with broken hearts. My tight breath relaxed.
Yet from an even broader perspective, it occurs that this too is insignificant. Tomorrow, next year, in 100 years, will it matter? What we take to be so important, if viewed from a larger perspective, is but a wrinkle in the fabric of time. Events unfold in a timeframe, or return again and again, only to be consumed by the stillness, the vastness of space. We spend our lives fixating on particular aspects of phenomena that we either want or don’t want. Caught up in the appearance of reality, we ignore the real, which is simply the spacious clear awareness of that appearance. And immediately, once this awareness is recognized, there is peace.
Diary of a Pilgrim 