Inside me, it was quiet all day :
I waited until midnight for a sound.
Outside me, it was noisy all day :
I waited all night for silence.
Tao’s power is sound.
Tao’s potential is silence.It is said that even if one hears Tao before the day is over, then that day has been worthwhile. Even if one hears about Tao before one’s life is over, then one’s life has been worthwhile.
But sometimes it takes a long time to hear about Tao. There are some days when Tao does not manifest itself right away. It seems that the more you want to love, the more hatred tempts you. The more you want to be pure, the more negativity pursues you. The more you want serenity, the more chaos assaults you. The ordinary have common problems. Those who pursue Tao struggle against titanic forces. What can you do but accept it and persevere? If you fret about it, then you have not only spent the day away from Tao, but you have ruined that day with emotional turmoil too.
Sometimes Tao does not appear until the very end of the day. Maybe it’s just that you are more relaxed and have put aside all your cares. Maybe Tao is capricious. It is hard to say. When Tao does come, it is as if you are just now hearing a true sound. When it does come, such a feeling of serenity overcomes you that it quiets all the noise of the day.
“One of the greatest reasons people cannot mobilize themselves is that they try to accomplish great things. Most worthwhile achievements are the result of many little things done in a single direction.”
— Nido Qubein
“If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development.” — Brian Tracy
“I thought to myself, ‘I am wiser than this man: neither of us knows anything that is really worthwhile, but he thinks he has knowledge when he has not, while I, having no knowledge, do not think that I have. I seem, at any rate, to be a little wiser” — Socrates
“Do not let yourselves be discouraged or embittered by the smallness of the success you are likely to achieve in trying to make life better. You certainly would not be able, in a single generation, to create an earthly paradise. Who could expect that? But, if you make life ever so little better, you will have done splendidly, and your lives will have been worthwhile.”
— Arnold Toynbee
“All is worthwhile if the soul is not small.”
— Fernando Pessoa
How typical. In trying to put this post together, one of those stupid pop-up ads appeared on a page I visited, with sound! How appropriate that in trying to write about finding the stillness that is Tao, that moment it brings you in touch with the world, yourself, everything around you, I get noise. Yes, sometimes Tao can shout in the midst of a lot of noise, a celebration, a party, or a loud waterfall where the water is joyously laughing away. But usually Tao sneaks up on us in quiet contemplation and whispers to our hearts. If we are not still enough to hear it, it whispers in vain.
This is why Tao is not easy to write about. I hope my writings about Tao here have been worthwhile. Some days it is quiet all day inside me, and I really do have nothing to say. Most days, there is a lot of noise going on around me, news I feel compelled to read, other blogs that seem more interesting writing to read than it is for me to write, whatever tasks the day has in store for me.
Those that know do not say, and I cannot tell you what the experience of Tao is. You have to feel it for yourself. But the experience of Tao can be difficult to find, and I hope I have led you once in a while to a place where you can begin to find it for yourself, through an image or a quote or my own experiences of Tao. Namaste.
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