A group
of devotees invited a master of meditation to the house of one
of them,
to give them instruction. He told them that they must strive to
acquire
freedom from strong reactions to the events of daily life, an
attitude
of habitual reverence, and the regular practice of a method of
meditation
which he explained in detail. The object was to realize one
divine
life pervading all things.
"In the
end you must come to this realization not only in the meditation
period,
but in daily life. The whole process is like filling a sieve
with
water."
He bowed and left.
The little
group saw him off and then one of them turned to the others,
fuming,
"That's as good as telling us that we'll never be able to do it.
Filling
a sieve with water, I ask you! That's what happens now,isn't it?
At least
with me. I go hear a sermon, or i pray, or i read one of the
holy
books, or i help the neighbors with their children and offer the
merit
to God, or something like that and i feel uplifted. My character
does
improve for a bit -- i don't get so impatient, and i don't gossip
so much.
But it soon drops off, and i'm just like i was before. It's
like
water in a sieve, alright. But now he's telling us this is all we
shall
ever be able to do."
They pondered
on the image of the sieve without getting any solution
which
satisfied them all. Some thought he was telling them that people
like
themselves in the world could expect only a temporary upliftment;
some
thought he was just laughing at them. Others thought he might be
referring
to something in the classics which he had expected them to
know
-- they looked for references to a sieve, without success.
In the
end, the whole thing dropped away from them all except for one
woman,
who decided to see the master.
He gave
her a sieve and a cup and they went to the nearby seashore,
where
they stood on a rock with the waves breaking around them.
"Show me how you fill the sieve with water", he said.
She bent
down, held the sieve in one hand, and scooped the water into it
with
the cup. It barely appeared at the bottom of the sieve and then was gone.
"It's
just like that with spiritual practice, too", he said, "while one
stands
on the rock of I-ness, and tries to ladle the divine realization
into
it. That's not the way to fill a sieve with water, or the self with
divine
life".
"How do you do it then?", she asked
He took
the sieve from her hand, and threw it far out into the sea,
where
it floated momentarily and then sank.
"Now it's
full of water, and it will remain so", he said. "That's the
way to
fill it with water, and it's the way to do spiritual practice.
It's
not ladling little cupfuls of divine life into the individuality,
but throwing
the individuality far out into the sea of divine life."
- Trevor Leggett