Inner Truth: Meditation is the Gateway

We hardly ever listen to the sound of a dog's bark or to the cry of a child or the laughter of a man as he passes by. We separate ourselves from everything, and then from this isolation look and listen to all things. It is this separation that is so destructive, for in that lies all conflict and confusion. If you listened to the sound of bells with complete silence you would be riding on it -or, rather, the sound would carry you across the valley and over the hill.

The beauty of it is felt only when you and the sound are not separate, when you are part of it. Meditation is the ending of the separation, but not by any action of will or desire.

Meditation is not a separate thing from life; it is the very essence of life, the very essence of daily living. To listen to the bells, to hear the laughter of a peasant as he walks by with his wife, to listen to the sound of the bell on the bicycle of a little girl as she passes by: it is the whole of life, and not just a fragment of it, that meditation opens.

The author (1895 – 1986) was one of the great thinkers and religious teachers of the 20th century 
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