remarkable stones

I'm here, sitting in a river bed, in India. At the moment the water level is very low, and much of the river bed is exposed. And just here there are pebbles, a vast expanse of pebbles, in all sorts of colours: there are reds and pinks and sandy coloured ones, black and white and grey, some with a bluish tint. But I have picked up an orange one, because the orange pebbles here are quite remarkable.

But before I speak about this orange pebble, I wanted to say something about another stone that came to my mind, and that was one I picked up in South America many years ago. It was pumice, and it floated. I took a photograph of that floating stone, and kept it on the wall in my workplace, for several years, because every time I looked at it, it reminded me to think outside the box. It reminded me that, a lot of the time, we generalise and make assumptions which are not always valid. One might think that stones sink in water, full stop. And most of them do. But that pumice stone didn't, it floated.

And that brings me to this orange stone. This one, I'm confident, would sink if I placed it in water. But it is remarkable in another way. It is translucent. When I hold it up to the sunlight, some light filters through, as if it were amber. Perhaps it is, though it is rock hard.

And again, this translucent characteristic is giving my mind a little jolt, a shock. Can light go through rocks? Normally one would answer, no, they block the light. And yet this one allows some light to come through. And again, this unusualness is reminding me not to over generalise, not to make assumptions, to look at every stone individually.

And so it should be with the whole of life, including people. We are all unique beings. Perhaps fitting some stereotypes, now and again, perhaps not.

So these stones, these remarkable stones, have given me a great lesson today: really to see what is before my eyes, without any prejudgment, without any preconception, to be open to what is, rather than get hung up on what my mind thinks must be the case. These stones demand me to live with a tremendous awareness, and not to live from habit, not to live from what I know about the world, but instead to open my eyes, my senses, to see and feel what is here, with me, in the moment.