September 28th
In early morning just as the sun came up, when the air was fresh and still cool from the night, the green woods surrounding the cabin were full of bird sounds. Gentle breezes blew off the lake, rustling the leaves of the huge old live oak trees with long gray moss swaying from their branches. From beyond the lake, out of silence, came the distant sound of waves breaking as they rolled onto shore.
In late afternoon, along the sandy woods trails that lead to the beach, with sunlight filtering through the oak trees and dancing all around, wild mushrooms pushed up from the forest floor, under the dry brown leaves of early autumn.
There is peace in nature, unchanging peace. There always, permeating and embracing all that is.
Peace is our natural state of being. All else is illusion. Notice what happens in those moments when there is no resistance to life, when there are no reactions. There is only peace. So why do we not learn to live always in peace?
Why do we give ourselves permission to react to the world? Why do we hold on so strongly to our resistance? Why is it so important to be right and to judge everything around us? For that never brings peace, but rather holds us away from feeling peace.
Why do we continue to punish ourselves day after day, to feel the pain of our resistance and reactions to life? In so doing, we act as if life has no meaning, except to suffer.
It is so simple. Just pay attention to the pain we feel when we react to life, and pay attention to the peace that is there in those brief moments when we do not react. Then when we do that, we cannot continue to react to the world.