kingfisher

The kingfisher, utterly still, darting in a flash

Have you ever seen a kingfisher, watched a kingfisher? Have you sat and observed the way the kingfisher perches on a branch above a creek, or on a rock by the ocean? It sits utterly still, unmoving. It can stay like that for a long time. Then suddenly it darts, dives, right into the water and emerges with a fish in its beak. This is the way of the kingfisher, moving between total stillness and total action.

We could learn from this kingfisher, for this stillness which it knows is also the stillness deep within us, the stillness we come upon through meditation, or by chance. It is from such stillness that our actions can be total, just as the dive of the kingfisher is total, without doubt. Ordinarily we humans are rather half hearted, wishy-washy in our deeds, in our actions. We would do well to be more like the kingfisher, totally still or acting with a similar totality.

If we become very perceptive of what is within us, we may see that these two states are not separate. Have you ever danced wildly, crazily, not dancing with somebody, not dancing to impress somebody, but just allowing the body to move to music, without any self-consciousness? Dancing this way, one can disappear leaving only the music and the moving body, the two coming together as the dance. In that dance, you may have the feeling of stillness. For there is a point within us which is utterly still the whole time. When our peripheral self has disappeared for a while, we can feel that stillness even as the body is moving. Conversely, in meditation, sitting still, the mind quiet, have you ever felt the dance of the universe in its latent form, the sheer potential energy, buzzing in the stillness?

So, let us delve deep within us and come to the point where we are feeling the stillness in the dance and the dance in the stillness. Then we will have surpassed even the kingfisher in our enjoyment of life.