Live Art/Meditation by the Community at the San Francisco Buddhist Center
(around the corner from ATA on Bartlett Street)
Saturdays and Sundays
January 15 & 16: 10am-6pm
January 22 & 23: 10am-6pm
Plus a special screening of With One Voice, a documentary film about mysticism
Sunday, January 16th, 6pm
For more information, please contact Suvanna at suvanna@sfbuddhistcenter.org; 415.282.2018; http://www.sfbuddhistcenter.org/program/softening.shtml.
We spend much of our lives watching outer media… looking outside. We spend
a lot of time moving, restless, trying to be comfortable, productive,
worthy, or something else.
What happens if I soften? What happens if I stop, watch inside?
“Keeping Quiet” by Pablo Neruda
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
This one time upon the earth,
let’s not speak any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be a delicious moment,
without hurry, without locomotives,
all of us would be together
in a sudden uneasiness.
The fishermen in the cold sea
would do no harm to the whales
and the peasant gathering salt
would look at his torn hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors,
would put on clean clothing
and would walk alongside their brothers
in the shade, without doing a thing.
What I want shouldn’t be confused
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters,
I want nothing to do with death.
If we weren’t unanimous
about keeping our lives so much in motion,
if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding ourselves
and threatening ourselves with death,
perhaps the earth is teaching us
when everything seems to be dead
and then everything is alive.
Now I will count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I’ll go.
