Every artistic creation is an attempt to recover something of the original sense of order, of right proportion. Our capacity for wonder, for awe, our sense of the magical and the sacred, has its source here—in what we can call a state of grace, equilibrium. I suppose that what we refer to as sacred is so because of some primal relation between ourselves and the world. We feel that a part of our being is hallowed or blessed by this, that some acts of ours enhance this feeling, while others violate it.
~ from "The Creative Spirit in Art and Literature" by John Haines, in THE NATURE OF NATURE, edited by William H Shore
Sean, my Yogic Irish dairy farmer, explained our chaotic world to me in this way. "Imagine that the universe is a great spinning engine," he said. "You want to stay near the core of the thing -- right in the hub of the wheel -- not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness -- that's your heart. That’s where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that center and you'll always find peace."
Thich Nhat Hanh came on stage. In the space of ten minutes, this small Vietnamese man had drawn every single one of us into his silence. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that he drew us each into our own silence, into that peace which we each inherently possessed, but had not yet discovered or claimed. His ability to bring forth this state in all of us, merely by his presence in the room – this is divine power.
