The emphasis placed on the importance of keeping still in all the major religious traditions is not entirely intuitive, when you think about it. I'd guess it comes at least in part through straightforward experience. There are voices you just cannot hear when you're too busy even to listen to your own.
It's interesting to note what an enemy of everything that constitutes the modern world stillness is. Put it together with silence and you have something deeply revolutionary.
When I first began to pray in the Islamic style, the solat we perform five times a day, it was the difficulty of just being still for those few minutes that struck me so forcibly. Many years on I've learnt, for the most part, to embrace the stillness.
No comments:
Post a Comment