Zen

Last week my flatmate was away so I took the opportunity to have a week of zen - no computers, TV, radio or Ipod and as little phone contact as possible. It makes you realise just how much these things intrude in your life without you really acknowledging it.

During this silent period I read the Bhagavid Gita. This is the oldest full-fledged yoga book found embedded in the Mahabharata and contains the teachings on karma yoga (the path of self-transcending action), samkhya yoga (the path of discerning the principles of existence correctly), and bhakti yoga (the path of devotion), as given by a God-man to a Prince on the battlefield 3,500 years or more ago.

A small part of it talks about action with inaction and inaction within action - very generally translating to working without any personal attachment to the outcome and rather doing it as a selfless service to the world.
Funnily enough this made sense to me when out running this morning and listening to the new Snow Patrol album, a track called Chasing Cars. I felt absolute stillness yet was physically moving as fast as I could, a song and an action combined helped me realise something so much deeper.

We'll do it all
Everything on our own
We don't need anything
Or anyone

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

I don't quite know
How to say
How I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
They're not enough

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see

I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?