The other day I was riding a motorbike, here in India, when a haystack caught my attention. This particular haystack was huge – as big as a house. Sitting on top of the haystack were a couple of men, lazily looking down on the world. How they got there and how they intended to get down was a mystery. Most remarkable of all, perhaps, was that this big haystack was on the move. At one end a small red tractor was edging cautiously along. The haystack must have been mounted on a trailer, though its skirt hung so low it was brushing the ground.
Seeing this haystack reminded me of the saying “looking for a needle in a haystack.” It strikes me that these days we have access to an unprecedented volume of information. The sum knowledge of humanity seems to be available on the internet. When browsing on-line, we sometimes chance upon something useful. At other times though, it feels like we are looking for that proverbial needle in a haystack – and what a massive haystack the internet is!
Today this saying also brings another connotation to me. Our spiritual journey is really a search, even if at times we don’t even know what we are seeking. Finding our way home, discovering who we really are, is also like looking for a needle in a big haystack. In this case, though, the haystack is constituted of all the ideas stuffed in our head – ideas about the world and, above all, ideas about ourself. Only when we find our way through this haystack in the mind, or better still, when we set fire to it, do we find that precious point within our being.
