On July 2 forty members of the Edmund Rice movement from across the world will gather at the Karen Retreat Centre in Nairobi Kenya to immerse themselves in the life, spiritualities, land and cultures of Africa. They come with hearts full of questions and perhaps some anxiety. To begin the journey into appreciating their new hosts they will have to take on a heart emptied and attuned to hear the murmurings of the sounds born in the pauses between the words and the welcoming gestures. They like the disciple in this story will have to listen with the ears of the heart and not just the ears of the external senses:
A Zen master was walking in silence with one of his disciples along a mountain road. When they came to an ancient cedar tree, they sat down under it for a simple meal of some rice and vegetables. After the meal, the disciple, a young monk who had not yet found the key to the mystery of Zen, broke the silence by asking the master, ‘Master, how do I enter Zen?’
He was, of course, inquiring to enter the state of consciousness which is Zen.
The master remained silent. Almost five minutes passed while the disciple anxiously waited for an answer. He was about to ask another question when the Master suddenly spoke: ‘Do you hear the sound of that mountain stream?’
The disciple had not been aware of any mountain stream. He had been too busy thinking about the meaning of Zen. Now, as he began to listen for the sound, his noisy mind subsided. At first he heard nothing. Then, his thinking gave way to heightened alertness, and suddenly he did hear the hardly perceptible murmur of a small stream in the far distance.
‘Yes I can hear it now,’ he said.
The Master raised his finger and with a look in his eyes that in some way was both fierce and gentle, and said, ‘Enter Zen from there.’
The disciple was stunned. It was his first satori – a flash of enlightenment. He knew what Zen was without knowing what is was that he knew!
They continued on their journey in silence. The disciple was amazed at the aliveness of the world around him. He experienced everything as if for the first time. Gradually, however, he started thinking again. The alert stillness became covered up again by mental noise, and before long he had another question. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I have been thinking. What would you have said if I hadn’t been able to hear the mountain stream?’ The Master stopped, looked at him, raised his finger and said, ‘Enter Zen from there.’
Reflection:
It is through coming gently to a sense of the real presence. Presence is a state of inner spaciousness. When you are present you ask: ‘How do I respond to the needs of this situation, of this moment?’ You don’t need to compare or judge the new experience with the familiar world from which you have come. Instead of reacting against the situation, you merge with it, and the solution arises out of the situation itself. Right action is action appropriate to the whole. Actually it is the alert stillness of your heart that is listening and paying deep attention.
Often in cross-cultural setting people sense perception takes up more of their consciousness than thinking. But some physically travel to the place and their experience is distorted through judgments. They remain at home in their heads. As soon as something new is perceived it is named, interpreted, compared with something else, likes, disliked, or called good or bad by the ego. They are imprisoned in their own tried and proven thought forms. You can’t awaken spiritually until the compulsive and unconscious naming ceases or at least until you become aware of it.
Peter Harney (ptrharn@aol.com) on behalf of the Congregation Renewal Team
(For further reflection Eckhart Tolle (2005) A New Earth: Awakening to Your
Life’s Purpose, Penguin Books, New York.)