I crushed two snails on my way to work this morning. Not being mindful, not being aware. yet today, this morning there was something in the air, something in my breathe: something different.

Today I recalled gratitude. Today I realised once again that I have not been practising. I have spent much of the last 4-5 months making money. Not a lot of money I guess compared to many others, yet enough for me to be able to have a little more each month that I am spending. For the first time in four years I am putting a little aside each month, I am starting to reduce my debts. And that feels good.

Now, this morning I realised that that money is coming easy, and it will keep coming easy. Now, this morning I realised that I have time to once again express my gratitude. I have time to practice. To start again. I have time to see the snails on the path in front of me.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

The way of the monastic life is not simply an escape from ‘reality’. It can be a genuine attempt to remove the bricks and dismantle the walls that exist between us, for the truest form of connection between sentient beings does not occur through any expression of self.

No sound, no movement, no glance, no gesture is as powerful as the presence of silence.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

He remembered that one time. One time, about five years ago, when it had seemed that he had entered into a state of pure equilibruim with all that surrounded him. He remembered a feeling of peace, of ease. It was a moment in which he was never conscious of making a decision. Things just happened. Not separate from him and not ‘to’ him, but kind of ‘with’ him. In that moment, in that time he was part of all that existed. Just a part, not the main part or anything more than just another part, like the paint on the wall, the grass on the kerb, the people walking down the street as he drove past, the street itself.  It was all equal and therefore it was not up to him to decide what happened next, no one or no thing decided that, there was no need to decide because things just seemed to happen. Everything became like breathing, just happening without thinking. Life went on, life goes on.

Living, he recalled, in that moment, was easy.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Meditation and mindfulness help us to be free of the day to day distractions that we create. These distractions do not exist outside of ourselves. The noises we hear, the sights we see, the smells we inhale are exactly that. They are ours, and ours alone. No one else sees what we see, hears what we hear, smells what we smell, and feels what we feel. Our uniqueness does not stop at our fingertips, at the individual whirls and patterns that each of us have on our skin. We are all different from each other. We exist in our own worlds; of our own creation and re-creation. In this way what I see, hear, taste, smell and feel is not the same as what you experience. My experience of ‘life’ is just one version among billions, as is yours.

An objective reality; a Truth of the things outside of us does not exist. How can it when each of us, every single one of us, human, animal, insect – every sentient being, compehends and interprets these outside things differently.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Writing comes easily, it always has. I was raised to worship the word as written, as God. Writing was the road to salvation. It was the ultimate form of expression, of transmission. It was the means by which we could find our way through to the heart of darkness. I was taught to form symbols and meaning from the strokes of black on white.  My father showed me how to form the necessary symbols; my mother encouraged me to inform.

I was blessed with a fertile mind, an active mind. A blessing that meant I had plenty of material from which to form my words. My mind never shut off, there was always something there, something forming, reforming, leaping and sweeping, demanding space to move. This blessing soon become a curse, as I too quickly fell behind. My hand could not keep pace with that which moved it.  By the time I was six, the backlog had begun. Words unformed festered in my head, becoming mishappen and mashed together, they soon formed an amorphous seething black mass.

I tried my best to ease the beast inside. I scribbled and scrawled, doodled and drafted, and yet I never rid myself of that backlog. The seething mass just kept getting bigger and darker and more demanding. I tried, and the more I tried the more I seemed to fail. All I managed were moments of temporary relief through an expulsion of built up vocabulary onto the page in front of me.

What I saw there only disheartened me more. My words made no sense.  Their mutant shape while  recognisable to me, were alien to any others who saw them.  They were not pretty, they emerged from me squashed and pummelled. I had no time it seemed to nurture and nourish them after their birth, for there were always so many others, mangled and maimed, yearning to be set free.

For so many years I have lived in this agony. A narrow neck, a choked canal.

 So why do it?

Because it is what I am meant to do. I realise that now. It is not about making sense. It is not about finding an audience. It is not about anything other than this, simply this. Writing words is what I’m meant to be doing.

Some people are talkers, others have a healing touch, others still are affectionate and demonstrative in their love. I am all these things in part, yet none of these things come as naturally or as easily as the recording of my mind.

And I need to keep practising. I need to keep sitting in front of the page and writing what I am. For when I am not, I am distracted by the voices in my head. I am distracted through attachment and investment. When I am not writing I am caring; caring about whether I make sense, caring about whether I am making a good impression, caring about whether I am fully in this moment or not, and what the next one might be.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x