Yesterday DC and I attended the Quaker meeting in Keswick. There was talk before the meeting about the future of meetings and the Quakers and I'd heard similar words recently at the Newcastle meeting. There was ministry regarding change. I was drawn to speak, I sat still and said nothing but the urge persisted and I resisted until it was clear- stand. 'Everything is changing all the time, but it is cut through with stillness.' I've seen this clearly in the past and it seemed in the meeting to be the concise response to the questions raised in the ministry. I sat and felt into the space again. I wasn't entirely comfortable with way the word cut had come out- too sharp, too much me in it. Maybe this should have been said in afterwords. It was close to the end of the hour. The clerk ended the meeting. There was no afterwards. One of those present came straight across and said to me 'thankyou, your ministry was concise'. This point is important to me as it is I suppose a road through the everyday to what is perhaps pointed to with 'A little point and Satori'. For an explanation if needed look here. The question that I find arising now is the ultimate one of 'faith' - does my experience continue in any way after death? Is there significance to this 'little point'? I've not crossed it nor approached it deeply enough to have experience which would qualify me to respond to the question. But I have wanted the answer to be such that there was a meaning in the answer beyond the rational. Because without that... without that the weight of everyday rational meaning is unbearable. And yet if there is a finite end then at least there is an end to any pain at least for a single being. To answer this question of faith it is not good enough to merely recognise our interconnectedness in the living everyday world. It is perhaps to ask as Hamlet does '...what dreams may come?' But this too is a disturbance. His place of asking is not neutral. The ripples of his mind obscure the very ground upon which they sit. The question might be better put as 'when the mind is still where does it sit? And thus where and what were those ripples? Well, we know how the Platform Sutra puts it so there's nothing I can add. In truth it's still very much through a glass darkly at best for me. And something, no-thing, was concisely conveyed.
