“It is inner stillness that will save and transform the world.”               

-Eckhart Tolle

Once upon a time, I gathered this as a quote that spoke to me.   This promise of stillness and what it could make possible, not only for me but for the world, was something I wanted, yet had not encountered in such a profound and transformational way.  As I write these words on this page, from my heart to yours, I have now tasted deeply this level of stillness and believe as well that it will save and transform the world.   For it is out of stillness that everything as we know it once began and it is in its very nature to return to this space of stillness.

Sit with these words from Lao Tzu in the Tao te Ching:

Empty your mind of all thoughts

Let your heart be at peace.

Watch the turmoil of beings,

but contemplate their return.

Each separate being in the universe

returns to the common source.

Returning to the source is serenity.

If you don’t realize the source,

you stumble in confusion and sorrow.

When you realize where you come from,

you naturally become tolerant disinterested, amused,

kindhearted as a grandmother, dignified as a king.

Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,

you can deal with whatever life brings you,

and when death comes, you are ready.

In the summer of 2019, I mindfully closed a business, sold my home, purged my simple belongings down to a few small boxes of meaningful items (mostly from my travels around the world) and moved to a tiny Japanese house in Kyoto, Japan.  It was an intentional decision with one purpose in mind…to step out of the world for a brief year of pause and silence.

Stillness.

I moved to Japan to allow every last fragment of my “self” to break completely apart, to sit in stillness with that, and simply be, until I allowed to rise to the surface, only those things that were truly worth holding on to.

Absolutely nothing else.

The simplest and purest version of myself.  I was seeking to cultivate a way of “being” within myself, my true home.

Stillness, however one’s journey takes them to reach this place, is the absolute and only way to truly begin.  It is only from this place of complete stillness that one can begin to be silent and hear the whisper of the soul.

There is a principal in Japanese culture known as “ma”.  It can be translated as “the pause or emptiness between.”

Silent.   Empty space.

Writing is a difficult path.  It is a purging.  It requires one to bare open their soul.  It requires the sometimes cold, dark solitude of isolation before the words come through.  In that sense, it is much like committing to the daily practice of meditation or a movement practice. 

When I meditate, each day I know I will go into the solitute, the space where I will connect with my soul.  I also know that within that silent space is where I may find tears waiting for me or be forced to sit with that which is deeply painful.   This is the path. 

So, in meditation or with writing, I may avoid it.  I may go to great lengths to choose anything that requires less pain and less laying open of my soul.  Yet if I do not perform this simple daily act, the practice of showing up and allowing my soul to flow through the pen, shall I ever then call myself a writer?  I shall never find myself worthy of the ink on my skin.  It will be more like a prisoner’s number, marking a painful reminder of all that might have been had I allowed myself to fully embody that which I came here to be. 

I once wrote the words, “I had to live this lifetime of experiences, so that one day you could read my words.”  “Certain poems can only come from a torn soul.“ Who would I be if I deprived you of my words…my words of healing, my words that might offer a light, or perhaps even gentle encouragement on your own journey home?  

I can at least offer you that.  

So each day I will write.  I will open my heart, my soul, and share the handful of breadcrumbs I am here to offer.  Let my wounds not go in vain. Let them offer you hope and encouragement and healing on your way.

What if the act of simply being were enough?   What if there was nothing that the world was depending on for its survival that you needed to do?  What if there was nothing you could do to improve yourself or save another person?  What if you were enough by simply being here.   What if your essence, the simple act of your being here and taking on this human birth was all in and of itself just enough?  If we take a huge step back from ourselves and our individual lives of experience and consider that the world has been here for billions of years before we arrived and will continue on its own long after we are gone.  Our lives from that perspective, 80 years or so, are the blink of an eye.  The true essence of who we are came in with us at birth and will continue after our earthly body has returned to dust.  Who you are…your truest essence….is your being.  Your being cannot be added to or taken away from or improved upon. 

Breathe into that for just a moment. 

Be with that. 

Consider what becomes important in this new year from that perspective.

A recent article in the New Yorker entitled “Why Walking Helps Us Think” provided the inspiration that “since the time of the peripatetic Greek philosophers, many other writers have discovered a deep, intuitive connection between walking, thinking and writing.”  In a subsequent piece in the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik wrote, “How vain it is to sit and write when you have not stood up to live!” 

During my year in Kyoto I discovered the mindful movement and meditatiive connection to my own inspiration through hours of endless and aimless walking while intimately discovering the oldest ancient city of Japan.  Kyoto is precisedly laid out in great detail as a walkable city, whereby most residents make their way through their daily routines on foot, bike or train.  During my year living in Kyoto, I walked over 600 miles through rain, heat or snow.  Walking was one of the essential rituals I discovered as one form of my daily meditation practice.  It became as routine as eating or brushing my teeth. 

It was during my long afternoon walks among the Japanese Maple trees, Zen gardens and narrow streets that poems would effortlessly come forth.  During my many strolls along the Kamigawa River inspired ideas would come from the higher realms.  Often I would have to stop somewhere so that I could sit on a bench and write in my notebook everything that was coming through me and onto the page.

There is no coincidence that many great thinkers and writers throughout the ages have made long walks part of their daily routines.  In one of my all-time favorite books, Daily Routines, great thinkers and creators from Albert Einstein to Thoreau to Carl Jung all prioritized the daily walk as a practice in which many of their most inspired ideas came forth.

Wherever you find yourself, amidst whatever life circumstances, the mindful practice of a daily walk incorporates movement and meditation and opens your mind to a voice that cannot be heard unless we break free for a window in nature every day.

“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk.  Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness.  I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”

                                                                       -Soren Kierkedgaard

Any attempt to describe the essence of Zen falls short within the limited construct of words, like trying to convey the sound of raindrops falling upon a flower petal in September, or the sensual experience of a warm cup of tea on a winter morning, or the awareness of the universe as it flows freely through your breath, limitless without any effort or intention on your part.  It is, in the words of the old Japanese Zen Masters, like pointing a finger to the moon. 

The very paradox of Zen lies in trying to describe in our limited language that essence which is beyond all words, beyond our humanness, beyond space and time.  One can only experience the essence of Zen for oneself, within oneself.  How can one possibly ever express in words the experience of being on a still, calm lake as hues of pink and blue paint a mosaic of colors across the sky, just as the morning sun makes its appearance along the horizon, and in that one moment the awareness of your individual insignificance in the vastness of this endless universe, and yet in that same moment the entire universe reveals itself within you in a fleeting glimpse of oneness with everything?  Or how can one convey the miracle of a baby’s breath ever so delicately brushing across your cheek in one miraculous moment? 

A monk once asked Zen Master, Zhàozhōu:

“What is my Teacher?”

Zhàozhōu answered:  “Clouds rising out of the mountains, streams entering the valleys…without a sound.”

“I wasn’t asking about them”…the student said.

“Though you don’t recognize them they are your teacher,”  Zhàozhōu responded.

The essence of Zen cannot be captured or quantified.  It can only be glimpsed, breathed, found unexpectedly in a single moment of stillness.  It is like trying to capture and hold an elusive butterfly happily making its way through the milkweed at sunset.  We spend our lives seeking for it outside of ourselves only to be disappointed when all the while it is quietly and patiently waiting to be discovered within and all around us.

Everything is our teacher.