Presence

 

A living master transforms us, not because of what they think or say or do, but because of the light that shines from their heart. This light is beyond thought, and it enters our being at a level that has nothing to do with believing.

We may sit in an auditorium and listen to them speak. Afterward, a friend asks us what they said, what their thinking is on a certain subject. But we have no answer. We can't even remember. And it doesn't matter. Or if we try to tell them, it sounds empty, like the rustle of old newspapers: because what we received came directly from Being, not from thought or speech. The words were just an occasion for a deeper transmission, a stream of nectar poured from one heart into another, until the cup is shattered and there is only one ocean of love.

If we are truly fortunate, we meet a being whose silent radiance is so palpable that they do not have to speak at all. They don't do anything but sit with us, and gaze into our eyes. And that suffices. That gaze contains more knowledge and virtue than all the books, lecture notes and lab reports in all the world's universities. Because the energy field of the heart's silence is 10,000 times more powerful than any ideas.

And the time now dawns on earth when each of us is this gaze for one another...

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