3 Sri Lanka (Back in the Hills)
May 30, 2022

50 Wednesday

“...it’s said that it’s not possible to cultivate virtue, but it’s usually said by people who know more about the spiritual life than they do about cultivation, because as any farmer or gardener can tell you, they are not able to make things grow, the most they can do is prepare things in such a way that the conditions are favourable for growth, and I feel it’s the same in the spiritual life really, you have to do whatever it is that is given to you to do, so you try and clear the ground of the hindrances, and you prepare the soil with a sound moral base and so on, and those things you can do, and have a certain responsibility to do, but after that it’s really a grace whether anything grows there or not – generally it will of course, but I think this thing about grace is worth emphasising: you see, to me, life itself is a grace, what could you possibly do to earn it? It’s just a gift, but most people are not, for whatever reason, taking advantage of this gift, so they run around seeking self-expansion and self-glorification, and before they know it they’re dead, and they never really got down to doing a little bit of living first. They know pleasure but not joy, desire but not love, suffering but not compassion; and these things: joy, love, compassion and so on, may come into being when you’ve done something to recognise and remove the hindrances, which are like weeds clogging up the earth. So I feel that although you cannot make these things grow, you may find that these virtues arise, naturally, that they are part of the flow of the universe.”

earth is God!
earth is God!
O don’t you know
that earth is God?

bend right down
pick up some dust
from this you came
return you must

look down! look down!
O please look down
O can’t you see
that earth is God?

51 Thursday