Westerner
by choice and birth, and my salvation lies in Western ways.
I want to rise and continue on my way, but some inner voice holds me here. Even though I have given up trying to measure my
breath, I remain fixed inside this oval of stone, listening to the sound of the sea. I allow my mind to fill up with thoughts
because that is what it wants to do. The universe is full of philosophies, and I’m open to any that drift my way.
I’m not immune to the crosswinds that sweep over the mountains and plains of the planet, bringing my thoughts to others and
theirs to me. Those winds travel without respect for national boundaries, and they can’t be halted by border guards. Despots
and demagogues may attempt to stop the flow of ideas they fear, but there is no barricade high enough or wide enough to block
the breeze.
The wisdom of the Zen master and poet Thich Nhat Hanh once reached me on such a wind, and I tucked it away in some remote
recess of my mind. I believe we summon from buried memory what we need to know when we need to know it, and that is what happens
to me now. Words from his book
The Miracle of Mindfulness
well up, seemingly from nowhere, as if I had been saving them for this precise moment of my life.
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle,” Nhat Hanh wrote. “But I think the real miracle is not
to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth.”
To the devout, his words may seem irreverent, maybe even sacrilegious, but I think they speak to the deepest spiritual impulses
of men and women everywhere. When I think of saints, prophets, and poets, when I try to imagine what they are like and how
they move through the world, I see them as individuals walking the earth with an awareness that sets them apart from ordinary
men.
Gandhi was that way, so was Tolstoy, and so was Thoreau. St. Francis was that way; so was St. Joan. Jesus was surely that
way, for we mark his journey through Galilee not by the distance he traveled, which wasn’t vast, but by the intensity of what
he did and said as he walked the land.
I don’t know what made those people that way. Perhaps they paused long enough amid the tumult of life to listen to a voice
within themselves that told them what to do and where to go. They didn’t suppress that voice, smother it, push it down; they
heeded it, obeyed it, followed its dictates—and as they did, the voice grew in power and strength, until it was the primary
sound they heard.
Not all men are born to be saints, but I believe we are all born with a voice within that we tend to ignore until it becomes
so indistinct we barely know it’s there. The voice doesn’t come from an almighty God in the sky; it comes from an in-dwelling
God in the soul. The poet-philosopher Henri Bergson, author of
Creative Evolution
, called it the élan vital, the vital impulse, the divine spark, the life force that drives us on.
I find in the works of Bergson and Nhat Hanh a common meeting ground, a point where East and West are joined. When we walk
the earth in a mindful way, we are fully conscious of ourselves, and when we are conscious of ourselves, we begin to climb
the evolutionary scale, entering higher states of being than we have ever known before.
It’s a crucial matter, this business of walking the earth in a mindful way, for it may be our only hope for raising the human
race out of the morass of hostility and bloodshed that engulfs it now. What we are engaged in is nothing less than directing
our own evolutionary destiny, ascending to a level of awareness where mayhem is no longer a way of life. That may sound like
a miracle, and it is; but it is a miracle we can bring about through conscious effort, one man, one woman at a time.
I begin with myself: That is the starting point. I have it within my power to influence the course of history. If I act alone,
it doesn’t matter. It only matters that I act. If
by choice and birth, and my salvation lies in Western ways.
I want to rise and continue on my way, but some inner voice holds me here. Even though I have given up trying to measure my
breath, I remain fixed inside this oval of stone, listening to the sound of the sea. I allow my mind to fill up with thoughts
because that is what it wants to do. The universe is full of philosophies, and I’m open to any that drift my way.
I’m not immune to the crosswinds that sweep over the mountains and plains of the planet, bringing my thoughts to others and
theirs to me. Those winds travel without respect for national boundaries, and they can’t be halted by border guards. Despots
and demagogues may attempt to stop the flow of ideas they fear, but there is no barricade high enough or wide enough to block
the breeze.
The wisdom of the Zen master and poet Thich Nhat Hanh once reached me on such a wind, and I tucked it away in some remote
recess of my mind. I believe we summon from buried memory what we need to know when we need to know it, and that is what happens
to me now. Words from his book
The Miracle of Mindfulness
well up, seemingly from nowhere, as if I had been saving them for this precise moment of my life.
“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle,” Nhat Hanh wrote. “But I think the real miracle is not
to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth.”
To the devout, his words may seem irreverent, maybe even sacrilegious, but I think they speak to the deepest spiritual impulses
of men and women everywhere. When I think of saints, prophets, and poets, when I try to imagine what they are like and how
they move through the world, I see them as individuals walking the earth with an awareness that sets them apart from ordinary
men.
Gandhi was that way, so was Tolstoy, and so was Thoreau. St. Francis was that way; so was St. Joan. Jesus was surely that
way, for we mark his journey through Galilee not by the distance he traveled, which wasn’t vast, but by the intensity of what
he did and said as he walked the land.
I don’t know what made those people that way. Perhaps they paused long enough amid the tumult of life to listen to a voice
within themselves that told them what to do and where to go. They didn’t suppress that voice, smother it, push it down; they
heeded it, obeyed it, followed its dictates—and as they did, the voice grew in power and strength, until it was the primary
sound they heard.
Not all men are born to be saints, but I believe we are all born with a voice within that we tend to ignore until it becomes
so indistinct we barely know it’s there. The voice doesn’t come from an almighty God in the sky; it comes from an in-dwelling
God in the soul. The poet-philosopher Henri Bergson, author of
Creative Evolution
, called it the élan vital, the vital impulse, the divine spark, the life force that drives us on.
I find in the works of Bergson and Nhat Hanh a common meeting ground, a point where East and West are joined. When we walk
the earth in a mindful way, we are fully conscious of ourselves, and when we are conscious of ourselves, we begin to climb
the evolutionary scale, entering higher states of being than we have ever known before.
It’s a crucial matter, this business of walking the earth in a mindful way, for it may be our only hope for raising the human
race out of the morass of hostility and bloodshed that engulfs it now. What we are engaged in is nothing less than directing
our own evolutionary destiny, ascending to a level of awareness where mayhem is no longer a way of life. That may sound like
a miracle, and it is; but it is a miracle we can bring about through conscious effort, one man, one woman at a time.
I begin with myself: That is the starting point. I have it within my power to influence the course of history. If I act alone,
it doesn’t matter. It only matters that I act. If
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