Contentment and sitars

 
 Isolation can lead either to a dulling of the senses or to a heightening of sensitivity, even as the ego can become for you a source of endless grief or of boundless spiritual graces.  All juridical thinking aside, intent is not nearly as important as relationality. How you actually encounter the silence, as yourself,  is what matters.

It is, of course, true that one gains nothing by pushing the river. On the other hand, we often settle for less simply because we do not expect much of ourselves, let alone expect much from the world.  If you have to ask yourself as to why the river is running so slowly these days, rest assured that you are well washed up. 

Contentment.  It is not a wet rag on a wash-line.  It is a tight-rope.  Buddha likened it to being a string on a sitar.  It is a single thought away from breaking, and a single thought in the other direction from being out of tune.  The only true place of relaxation and comfortable rest, then--a bed of nails. Look at it this way.  Contentment is that state of being which asks one hundred percent of you and will not settle for less. Indeed, it rejoices in the largesse of that which is added unto you in infinite measure when all and everything is given with nothing held back.  Anything that we do not give….that is the measure of our discontent.  In contentment one is fully alive, alert, and vibrant, full engaged or fully disengaged. In one of the Sutras it is written, a monk should even waste his time with diligence and mindfulness.

When we are in synchronization with the flow of time it ceases to exist for us.

Creativity cannot be measured by productivity.  One can write for eight hours at a stretch and produce nothing.  On the other hand, a single line of verse, skillfully wrought, can contain within its semantic contours and planes the creative force of an entire lifetime. At the end of the day, quality is measured by just how much was taken out of you. It is your self-emptying which fulfills. And, sometimes you will only see in retrospect what was actually accomplished.

Odd as it may seem, you create for the inspiration, and but inspiration is inversely proportional to perspiration.  Most often you do a lot of slogging anyway. And what is that? Faith.  It is the derelict conviction that if only you dig canals in the desert the water will flow.  Turn up dust and turn out cucumbers.  Actually, the cucumbers…that is what we call working.  As for the rest of it, I don't think any of us truly know what that is.