A Silent Teacher

An excerpt from "The Book of Awakening," by Mark Nepo

Today’s words from The Book of Awakening enveloped me this morning. In particular, it was the ideas of the reward for truth and the reward for kindness that made me pause and consider my expectations for being truthful and kind.

Nepo says that “…the reward for truth, after all this way, is not justice or knowledge or expertise — though these things may happen — but joy…the reward for kindness, as well, is joy.”

He goes further by sharing that “…the bareness of truth and compassion is the same. It returns me to a simple if rare moment in which thinking and feeling and knowing and being are all the same. It is this enlivening moment — so hard to find and so elusive to hold — that is my silent teacher.” Yes, all of this experienced in the silent spaces seems virtually impossible, and yet offers me, when attainable, tiny bits of joy.