Being Gentle


43

Being Gentle



While listening to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture we have very little doubt that we are listening to a work that looks back to battles and victories. If we instead listen to the Work of Karunesh in Moon Temple, we hear the gentle melodies written to assist and enable meditation. The notes paint an inner picture of calm and gentle harmony.

A mother while nourishing a child holds her in the gentlest of embrace looking into the eyes and giving succour with warmth and tenderness. As the child grows, parents, if they wish to draw from the child the very best, will continue to raise the child in the same spirit of gentleness. When needed, even rebuke can be given without harsh or rough words.

Much can be spoken with no words passing from one to another, with the gentleness of touch. Volumes can be conveyed with the gentle look and smile. 

Lao Tzu tells us that learning to be in touch with our Yin and not forcing we can achieve much, this may be difficult to comprehend, and many will never do so, preferring to be harsh and hard in their dealings with others.  

The artist who learns not to force things but to be at one with what it is they are working on will find that things will happen without effort. Many creative people speak of the happy accidents that transform something from the mediocre to greatness. To accomplish this, it is wise to be at peace, ready to see those little happy moments, this will come from working gently, taking time not rushing.

When lost and struggling to find the way forward, take a moment of gentle quiet, the solution often comes like a gently flowing stream and the inner torment calms.

As we can read in the Tao Te Ching, "The gentlest things in the world, overcome the hardest of things."  Embrace your gentler self and find peace within yourself.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Be Calm

Image
63 Be Calm   Life seems to be lived at a frantic pace, everything has to be done, and everything has to be done now. It was, not so very long ago, that the attention span of a human being was considered to be twenty minutes. Recent figures say that now the attention span of a child is down to fifteen. Teachers have now to prepare lessons keeping this in mind, changing the activity more frequently than before to allow them to hold the students' attention. In sharp contrast, Lao Tzu tells us that nothing good is achieved from rushing around. A simple statistic seems to give some support to this. When the speed limit on motorways was reduced by ten miles an hour there was almost an instant drop in the number of deaths on the roads. We gain so much more when we take life at a slower and simpler pace. How can the mind be fed and inspired by the beauty of life around us, if we are in too much of a rush to see and take it in? How can we learn from one another if we do ...
Read more

Solitude.

Image
42 Solitude. "The sage takes such things and makes the most of it. Embracing his solitude." I could have made those two sentences into one by adding the little word, by. Lao Tzu on more than one occasion speaks of times of solitude, here he goes a stage further and says he embraces it as if it was a dear and precious friend. The creative person will be familiar with the thought of embracing solitude. Most creative things are accomplished after and during times of working alone. Some may find it helpful to be part of a group, working together and sharing the experience, but even those moments are just an interlude to the many hours closed away in the studio or at the workbench. The writer, sitting at the keyboard hour after hour putting words from the mind and moving them into flowing and captivating prose. It often seems that we live with a fear of solitude and silence. Some say it is the loneliness of such, but that may be too simple. We seem to be in...
Read more

Yin - Yang.

Image
28 Yin - Yang To be truly creative the artist of either painting, music, sculpting or composing must know the strength of the male and grasp firmly to the sensitivity of the female. To know and to sense both the Yin and the Yang. It is in knowing and sensing this marvellous harmony of the universe that the creative person finds the joy of the Tao as the creative process flows and streams. Lao Tzu says when we grasp both the Yin and the Yang we become again like a child. In this state of being, we can create with real freedom. He goes on to speak of the uncarved block of wood. In the hands of the creative, living with the Tao, it can become so many wonderful and useful things.                                                                               The artist who ...
Read more