Today I got another email from the Raja Meditation Center. It went like this:
Getting on with it
Worrying about how everything will get done or whether I am capable of doing it limits my ability to respond to challenges. The less I think about doing something and the more I just get on with it the better. Good planning is always helpful, but time spent fretting and procrastinating drains my energy.
They told me they live on donation base alone. I wonder how they manage to survive.
I personally love language and good thinking. So here’s the same thought, but from Bert Hellinger (from his book “Insights”):
Knowledge and Knowing
A scholar consulted a sage as to
how separate parts create a whole
and what differentiates knowledge of the many
from knowledge of the whole.
The sage answered:
What is widely dispersed becomes an entity only
when it finds its centre.
For what is myriad
achieves substance and significance
only at the centre
and then its abundance looks like simplicity -
almost like nothing
a fruitful void, a calm force
gravitating towards
that which gives it meaning.
To experience the whole
or share in it
we do not need to know every detail,
neither do we need to speak of everything
nor have or do all.
To enter into the heart of the city
we only have to walk through one gate.
Many tones reverberate
in the striking of a single bell.
And when we pick a ripe apple
we need not know how it came to be as it is.
We take it in our hands and eat it.
The scholar argued with
the sage: to grasp the truth,
we must first know all the facts.
But the sage contradicted him:
only when the truth is grown old
can we begin to know all the facts.
Truth which makes us move on
is risky
and untried.
This truth conceals its promise
as the seed conceals the tree within.
Therefore if we hesitate to act because
we want to know more
than we need for our next step,
we miss the chance to grow.
We accept small change in place of riches
and out of living trees make firewood.
The scholar immediately remarked
that this was surely only part of the answer,
and begged the wise man for some more.
The wise man waved aside this question,
knowing that fullness resembles a barrel of fresh cider
- sweet and cloudy.
It needs fermentation and sufficient time
until it clears.
If instead of savouring it, we try to gulp it down
we become befuddled and unsteady.
