That morning the sea was like a lake or an enormous river without a ripple,
and so calm that you could see the reflections of the stars so early in the
morning. The dawn had not yet come, and so the stars, and the reflection of the
cliff, and the distant lights of the town, were there on the water. And as the sun
came up over the horizon in a cloudless sky it made a golden path, and it was
extraordinary to see that light of California filling the earth and every leaf and
blade of grass. As you watched, a great stillness came into you. The brain itself
became very quiet, without any reaction, without a movement, and it was strange
to feel this immense stillness. "Feel" isn't the word. The quality of that silence,
that stillness, is not felt by the brain; it is beyond the brain. The brain can
conceive, formulate or make a design for the future, but this stillness is beyond its
range, beyond all imagination, beyond all desire. You are so still that your body
becomes completely part of the earth, part of everything that is still.
And as the slight breeze came from the hills, stirring the leaves, this stillness,
this extraordinary quality of silence, was not disturbed. The house was between
the hills and the sea, over- looking the sea. And as you watched the sea, so very
still you really became part of everything. You were everything. You were the
light, and the beauty of love. Again, to say "you were a part of everything" is also
wrong: the word "you" is not adequate because you really weren't there. You
didn't exist. There was only that stillness, the beauty, the extraordinary sense of
love. The words you and I separate things. This division in this strange silence
and stillness doesn't exist. And as you watched out of the window, space and
time seemed to have come to an end, and the space that divides had no reality. 10
That leaf and that eucalyptus and the blue shining water were not different from
you.
Meditation is really very simple. We complicate it. We weave a web of ideas
round it what it is and what it is not. But it is none of these things. Because it is so
very simple it escapes us, because our minds are so complicated, so time-worn
and time-based. And this mind dictates the activity of the heart, and then the
trouble begins. But meditation comes naturally, with extraordinary ease, when
you walk on the sand or look out of your window or see those marvellous hills
burnt by last summer's sun. Why are we such tortured human beings, with tears
in our eyes and false laughter on our lips? If you could walk alone among those
hills or in the woods or along the long, white, bleached sands, in that solitude you
would know what meditation is. The ecstasy of solitude comes when you are not
frightened to be alone no longer belonging to the world or attached to anything.
Then, like that dawn that came up this morning, it comes silently, and makes a
golden path in the very stillness, which was at the beginning, which is now, and
which will be always there.
j.k
