was the blooming of spring or the starkness of winter, even when it
was dark and raining, when it was too dangerous to open the window
and she had to sit in the stifling, suffocating heat to do it, Anne
always managed to find in nature something to boost her spirits and
center herself. “Beauty remains, even in misfortune,” she wrote. “If
you just look for it, you discover more and more happiness and
regain your balance.”
How true that is. And what a source of peace and strength it can
be.
The trackless woods. A quiet child, lying on her belly, reading a
book. The clouds cutting over the wing of an airplane, its exhausted
passengers all asleep. A man reading in his seat. A woman sleeping.
A stewardess resting her feet. The rosy fingertips of dawn coming up
over the mountain. A song on repeat. That song’s beat, lining up
exactly with the rhythm of events. The pleasure of getting an
assignment in before a deadline, the temporary quiet of an empty
inbox.
This is stillness.
Rose Lane Wilder wrote of looking out over the grassy plateau in
Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia:
Here there was only sky, and a stillness made audible by
the brittle grass. Emptiness was so perfect all around me
that I felt a part of it, empty myself; there was a moment in
which I was nothing at all—almost nothing at all.The term for this is exstasis—a heavenly experience that lets us
step outside ourselves. And these beautiful moments are available to
us whenever we want them. All we have to do is open our souls to
them.
There is a story about the Zen master Hyakujo, who was
approached by two students as he began his morning chores on the
farm attached to his temple. When the students asked him to teach
them about the Way, he replied, “You open the farm for me and I will
talk to you about the great principle of Zen.” After they finished their
labors and walked to the master for their lesson, he simply turned to