Thoughts raged this morning, provoking feelings of helplessness and futility. Like a river delta my life is a series of shallow streams meandering slowly in search of the sea. If only it was channelled, it would flow with energy and purpose and, who knows, it might even get to a destination – not just come to an end, petering out into a morass at the edge of the sea. This of course is why the contemplative life, as a way of life, evolved in the first place.
There needs to be a framework which includes those things that are conducive to meditation and contemplation, and which excludes those which are not. The stark beauty and simplicity of monastic art and architecture, an icon, a cloister, a Zen garden, are like the surface of a clear, still pool of unimaginable depth. If the water is disturbed only the surface can be seen, but when it is still and silent one can gaze into the depths. When one emerges it is as though the cataracts which covered the eyes of the senses and the mind had been removed and people and the world are seen with a clarity and a beauty that is breathtaking.
In contrast, the garish colours and discordant noises, the vapid laughter and effusive gushings, the hurt, and the anger, and the bitterness of ordinary life lead either to a numbing hopelessness, or a self-destructive anger. It is a hedonistic world of the senses and it is a despairing world of anguish and suffering. It is a world of the blind who do not know that they are blind, who do not know or understand who they are, or where they are going, or even that there is a destination. In this aimless existence many are would-be escapists, some into the vicarious lives of soap-opera characters, some into the insensibility of drug addiction; others pursue money, or pleasure,or power. In spite of this there is so much warmth and humanity. There is love and self-sacrifice. There is a general unarticulated hunger for the Truth, if only one knew what it was.