The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.
A paragraph from Frederick Franck's new book, A LITTLE COMPENDIUM ON THAT WHICH MATTERS, which he graciously sent to Friends of Silence, also speaks to this theme:
D. T. Suzuki wrote that the spiritual life is pain raised above the level of mere sensation. 'Spirituality, born from life-pain, is that specifically human impulse from delusion to the really-Real within and outside of ourselves,' which characterizes the maturation of the human inner process: the thrust towards, and the commitment to, the Real ... Authentic spirituality is intimately related to firsthand, direct experiencing. It may mature through various disciplines, as for instance structured meditation and verbalized prayer. To live in radical openness to pure experiencing in the kitchen, bedroom, subway, newspaper, that is: to everyday life, inside as well as around oneself may, however be the equivalent of both formal meditation and verbal prayer. It is it he finding of one's path without being 'bamboozled, confused, side-tracked.'