Hush..!

‘Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature..’ Zhuangzi 

The lovely, agile and nimble steps of a ballerina as she glides across the stage, the plaintive, doleful strains of a saxophone, the triumphant victorious blasts of a trumpet in a Bach piece, how they are missed as we sit in the confines of our home, caged, locked up, locked in, ah, lock down it is, we think, for a body that longs to hear and see beauty on stage again.

Hush!

Listen! Still yourself, and hear nature play a tune your ears have stopped hearing as from afar a cuckoo cries, not once, but each cry an echo of the one that went before, as if it’s full throated rhapsody came from music sheet more divine than any composer had spent midnight oil on. And then a woodpecker joins, and soon, a warbler, it’s musical notes needing no acoustic manmade hall, to resound and resonate!

The soul within cries out with joy, as it, in sheer exuberance, embraces nature’s orchestra, and then, just as winged sounds fill the air, comes out the furry squirrel, the romantic lovebirds and they with gay abandon, dance lithely on nature’s stage, which oft is just the branch of yonder tree, but our souls dance along, more than they’ve ever done on manmade opera stage.

Listen to joyful contentment, nature provides, as operas and manmade symphonies fade into insignificance!

But to harken to such music nature offers free, we need to still ourselves.

Hush! Even the heartbeat that now resonates in that quietness is music more divine than Bach itself, for it breathes life. Those beats so soft yet vibrant in ones chest, tells us and the world around there’s hope yet, that no disease has yet won, that life pulses on, again nature’s joyful drumbeats, if only we were to listen.

But listen we don’t! Instead our minds long to hear cacophonies of noise, jarring screeches that even as they seem to satisfy our lust for life, only increase our desire for more such discordant noises; sounds of speeding car, as on accelerator we press increases our excitement for a more such faster experience, till in the slamming of brakes and screaming of metal on concrete, we find such excitement has but an unfortunate end…

But..

Not so the quiet sound that only thy stilled mind can hear!

Still yourself, listen, and hear nature play her tune our ears need to rediscover and relearn again, and what a sweet refrain it doth create!

Hush..!

Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and author.  He blogs at www.bobsbanter.com and can be reached at bobsbanter@gmail.com