The Freedom of Stillness

It is not somewhere to get to, something to gain, attain, achieve or even realise. It is what is ever-there, ever-here, present and already open.

It is as if you lost the keys to unlock the door, and you keep searching for the secret codes to gain access to some seventh heaven of enlightenment; however, there never was a door at all to enter.

Like this, everything is open and exists in and as this openness. 

It is suspended in itself. Weightless, shapeless and colourless. We constantly look to the form of this world and forget that it is the formless that informs all bodies. 

Suspended in the presence of this moment like a free fall, we leap and grasp and cling to feel substance in the face of emptiness. 

We crave because we cannot stand peace. We long because we are so often discontent with the simplicity of stillness. 

You do not have to go anywhere to find it. Be still. Let it find you. Be still and become knowing. 

The problem is we try to keep up. Humanity is not a race. Rushing to create a legacy to be remembered by is like building sand castles on the shore at low tide. 

Everything is soon wiped clean.

Seeing as such is seeing everything already cleaned. All the beautiful messiness of life; all the drama, shame, guilt and blame. All of the slow ageing movements towards stillness. 

The Buddha taught the treasure of impermanence. Everything is in a dynamic, interrelated flux. Where does one find shelter in such a sense storm?

Embracing change and impermanence wholeheartedly is to enter the stream without resistance. 

Carried in the stream, the water flows endlessly. Entering into the mouth of the endless, impermanence is uncovered as it truly is - the eternal face. The ground that does not change. 

Change is truth, yet Truth never changes. 

This is the eye of the storm and is found in every part of its dance. Like this, become stillness. 

Vow to sit for ten thousand years and let the seasons come and go and the weather fall all around you. 

Undisturbed quietude is like a warm blanket in the cold. To find it, one must abandon the restlessness within the human life. 

Aiming to be a free person means casting off conditions, concepts and habits that hold one captive. As long as you are captive, you are not free. 

We could speak all day about free will and pre-determinism; however, where the jewel lays in the stone is not in doing whatever we want or following our destiny. Instead, in the stopping, the sacred pause of presence and the not-doing, true freedom is found. 

It is like the subtle blossom of jasmine on an untrodden path.