Let my doing nothing
When I have nothing to do
Become untroubled in its depth
Of peace like the evening in the seashore
When the water is silent.
Rabindranath Tagore
My teacher told me to hold on to the sense ‘I am’ tenaciously and not to swerve from it even for a moment. I did my best to follow his advice and in a comparatively short time I realized within myself the truth of his teaching. This brought an end to the mind; in the stillness of the mind I saw myself as I am – unbound.
I simply followed (my teacher’s) instruction which was to focus the mind on pure being, ‘I am’, and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together, with nothing but the ‘I am’ in my mind, and soon peace and joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state. In it, all disappeared – myself, the life I lived, the world around me. Only peace remained, and unfathomable silence.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, 1897 –1981 indian non dualist teacher
You are impermanent and renewable, like your breath, like your steps. You are not something permanent experiencing something impermanent. You are something impermanent experiencing something impermanent.
If happiness can be renewed, so can you, because you in the next moment is a renewal of you in this moment. It’s wonderful to know that happiness lasts only as long as one in-breath or one step, because we know we can renew our happiness in another breath or another step.
Thich Nhat Hahn, The Art of Power