The monk stepped out of his cell, walked rapidly through the long and snaking corridors, and exited the monastery. His disturbed heart and disquiet mind ached for stillness. Nature and its sounds, the creatures of the forest, the almost perfectly flat and unhurried silent stream, was the whistle that brought his racing heart back to his soul.
Ambling through the grass, growing longer and unkempt as he walked further through the lush shrubs and bushes at the edge of the copse that surrounded their outpost of civilization, he drew nearer to his destination. Finally reaching the shore of pebbles and moss-decorated stones, he came upon a large and well-polished rock and sat down on top of it. With a gaze focused on the water, crystal clear like a metal mirror, sight and hearing become sharpened in that pleasant solitude.
A school of minnows scurried through a bundle of sunken branches and a water spider skated elegantly on the surface and a diving beetle swam like a torpedo above the neon algae, twisting and flaring through the stony riverbed. Birds and frogs murmured amongst themselves. An army of ants marched steadily in the cracks and trenches of the rugged bark of a pine. Lizards sunbathed atop the dark rocks. And a lonely spider diligently built its web weaving a silky pattern, a pattern its species has been weaving since before mammals existed. In that quiet orchestra and those antediluvian woods, all things were ancient and magnetized with mystery. Good. It’s all still there. Nothing is rushed and everything is accomplished.