The writer Mark Nepo tells the story of a master who sends his apprentice to a river and tells him to sit there until he’s learned all that the river has to teach. The apprentice dutifully goes to the river and sits down right at the very edge. The sound of the river is roaring. After a while, he decides it is too loud, so he picks up his blanket and treks to the top of a nearby mountain where he carefully places the blanket down in a spot where he can see a long stretch of the river far away. He’s too far away, can’t hear the river at all. He picks up his blanket and finds a midway point where he can sort of see and sort of hear the river. He dutifully meditates on his cushion. After three days, he is weary of the adventure. He feels guilty about not having learned much from the river. Then suddenly a monkey comes along and jumps into the river hooting and cavorting about, yapping and splashing. Something about this brings the apprentice to tears. He packs up his things and heads back to the master to tell him all that has happened. The master sighs and puts his hand on the apprentice’s shoulder and says “Ah, the monkey heard. You just listened.”
This has as certain parallel to my own experience of meditation. I want to do it right, in the right place, in the right way, at the right time. I want to “learn” what the silence teaches. But somehow I miss the chance to jump in the river and cavort about. I am like the apprentice sitting on the edge of things…
I like the poet Chelan Harkin’s similar advice;
REDEFINE EVERYTHING
Un-cinch the strings
around the word ‘faith’.
Take the corset
off of God.
What happens to it
when you set it free
and let it prance about?
Loosen up reverence
what happens there?
Experiment
with tickling the chin
of your beliefs
‘til they crack open slightly
with joy.
What if religion
were the untying
of old knots?
Why not redefine everything
starting with the concepts
we seem to care about the most?
Let’s keep reworking these definitions
until they feel more like they’re meant to –
a song of untethered love.