2014
Always Stillness, Always Movement
Today’s post is prompted by an interesting email conversation I had the other day with one of my Dharma buddies (thanks, Lori) about the practice of turning one’s attention to the open, spacious, stillness of mind. If you are at all interested in this practice, listen to the last 5 minutes of this talk given by Phillip Moffitt at the recent Concentration Retreat.
“There is always stillness,” Phillip says, “and there is always movement.”
T.S. Eliot says it like this:
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from not towards; at the still point, there the dance
is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement
from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still
point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
— from Burnt Norton, I, Four Quartets