A Life of Harmony

Life comes out of harmony.  We are in harmony with the universe when we gather fruit when it is ripened.  Gatherers and hunters of ancient times knew that time even by instinct.  They knew that if they cut the fruit before its time, they would not be able to eat it.  They knew that anxiety would not help them.  They also knew that delay had similar consequences. Ripened fruit would not wait for them; it would be eaten by the beasts, the birds, or microorganisms.  They lived in harmony with nature.  They and the law of nature were one.  A time came when people forgot the life of harmony.  Now they dwell in big cities by the millions.

Living in a big city is comfortable and doesn’t require much faith.  But to take care of a fruit grove or a herd of sheep for a living, or in the most extreme case, to live by gathering and hunting requires courage and great trust.  This kind of faith does not come from books or sermons, but from instinct and the necessity to survive.  There is no paycheck at the end of every month.  It is based not on logic but on trust and an inner feeling that you and the rest of the universe are one and are working together for the same goal.  This work is not always comfortable and so boredom never makes its nest in the hearts of such people. 

Because people of our age are losing this kind of courage and trust daily, they are also losing their ability to think and see things as they are.  They see weakness as strength and strength as weakness. They see courage as cowardice and cowardice as courage.  They lose their ability to perceive.  Perception is a matter of harmony.  There is harmony when our inside is the same as our outside, and our outside is the same as our inside.  This is possible only if we are in harmony with natural law.

For a person to be able to be in harmony with self and the world, he or she must always be able to bow down before something infinitely great which resides within their own heart.  When people are deprived of that understanding and bond, they cannot go on living and they die of despair.  As the days of our age become more challenging, we are called to live a life of harmony.

For people who live a life of harmony, what they think, what they speak, and what they do are all the same.

January 11, 2003