Reflection 154

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Attention To The Root

It is true, also, that the days or weeks or months following your initial seeing (whether it came explosively or not) are liable to prove joy-filled and light-some. You feel new-born into a new world. But sooner rather than later, alas, all this fades – much to your surprise and disappointment. “It does nothing for me!” The temptation is then to give up the meditation, under the mistaken impression that you have lost the art of it. In fact, if you persist nevertheless, it comes to be valued less for its appetising but incidental fruits than for itself – for the plain and savourless truth of it, for the nothing which it does indeed do for you, instead of the something it used to do – and this is a great advance. Beginning to lose interest in the fruits, you ensure they grow all the more healthily, unobserved and undisturbed, and ripen in season. Meantime, and always, your sole business is their nourishing Root. (Douglas Harding. To Be And Not To Be.)


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