“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do”
Rumi’s words seep slowly through my pores at odd moments: on the tram, on my meditation stool, in the early morning before light and movement return, when there is only the rise and fall of my chest as I listen to the first chorus of birds and the restless surge of the ocean.
They are gradually invading me, spreading their soft, silken glow throughout my body. I welcome them, drinking them in, watching them form into little channels and rivulets of meaning, separating and coming together again. I am cleansed by them as I imagine them encompassing me so thoroughly that they shine as a beacon that even others can see.
And I ponder. I imagine the world in which this plea became truly our highest ideal and the summit of our striving. Not the harried world in which we allow for “a little of what you love” on the side, but the one in which the beauty of what we love becomes the absolute focus of our ambition. Would chaos ensue? What might change within us? What might change in the *way we choose to see*?
The other day I listened to a story, the moral of which was a variation on “what you focus on expands”. It was as simple as a person’s attempt to meditate, with all the frustration that can engender. It was, initially, in the mind of the meditator, a story of failure. When appealed to, the teacher’s response was “Oh dear. You’re not practising meditation. You’re practising blame and recrimination.” No matter how often we hear the message, it seems to be the hardest one to grasp. We continue to focus on what “should” be rather than on kind attention to what is. We look to an outcome to change us, not realising that the goal is a mirage. It doesn’t exist. All that exists is the degree of kindness we can summon as we practise the imperfect art of breathing.
Soft fingers of pearlescent pink have now reached across a sky of palest pastel grey-white-blue. I let them seep into me, filling me. I imagine them as an embodiment of the beauty of what we love. I imagine them expanding to fill every person, every bird call, every leaf. If we were to build a world on the foundations of what we truly love, on those first tentative tendrils of morning light, I am certain that it would still be a very imperfect world. It would still be selfish and impatient, greedy and intolerant. We would all still carry with us everything we regard as our gravest faults. And yet, how very different that world would be, as we expanded our experience of beauty and love with everything we did, no matter how meanly or imperfectly. Not the unattainable goal of beauty or the desire of perfect love, but the kind, patient, compassionate practice of gently returning to them, again and again, however humbly, with every rise of our chest and every action of our body.
They are gradually invading me, spreading their soft, silken glow throughout my body. I welcome them, drinking them in, watching them form into little channels and rivulets of meaning, separating and coming together again. I am cleansed by them as I imagine them encompassing me so thoroughly that they shine as a beacon that even others can see.
And I ponder. I imagine the world in which this plea became truly our highest ideal and the summit of our striving. Not the harried world in which we allow for “a little of what you love” on the side, but the one in which the beauty of what we love becomes the absolute focus of our ambition. Would chaos ensue? What might change within us? What might change in the *way we choose to see*?
The other day I listened to a story, the moral of which was a variation on “what you focus on expands”. It was as simple as a person’s attempt to meditate, with all the frustration that can engender. It was, initially, in the mind of the meditator, a story of failure. When appealed to, the teacher’s response was “Oh dear. You’re not practising meditation. You’re practising blame and recrimination.” No matter how often we hear the message, it seems to be the hardest one to grasp. We continue to focus on what “should” be rather than on kind attention to what is. We look to an outcome to change us, not realising that the goal is a mirage. It doesn’t exist. All that exists is the degree of kindness we can summon as we practise the imperfect art of breathing.
Soft fingers of pearlescent pink have now reached across a sky of palest pastel grey-white-blue. I let them seep into me, filling me. I imagine them as an embodiment of the beauty of what we love. I imagine them expanding to fill every person, every bird call, every leaf. If we were to build a world on the foundations of what we truly love, on those first tentative tendrils of morning light, I am certain that it would still be a very imperfect world. It would still be selfish and impatient, greedy and intolerant. We would all still carry with us everything we regard as our gravest faults. And yet, how very different that world would be, as we expanded our experience of beauty and love with everything we did, no matter how meanly or imperfectly. Not the unattainable goal of beauty or the desire of perfect love, but the kind, patient, compassionate practice of gently returning to them, again and again, however humbly, with every rise of our chest and every action of our body.