listening to the rain

Here is something I’d written on Thu Sep 1, 2005… (not published on blog but sent to some personal friends)

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Its not something that I thought about but something that just struck me.

I said if we listen now – the first thing we hear is the TV. If we listen attentively for some more time, we hear dogs barking outside, cars going on the street, our neighbours opening their gates. Some more time and we hear sound of these night time insects. And if we listen attentively for even more time, we hear the soft sound of the rain.

And its not that all these sounds were not there before. Nor is it that the TV has switched off and everyone has stopped talking and dogs have stopped barking and everything has suddenly become silent. It has been raining all the while! We are not using any special hearing aid. Everything is as it is. Yet we are able to hear the rain now. Its just that our tendency to deviate to distractions has reduced, our attention has become sharper and sharper, to move from the gross (the obvious) to the subtle.

And its the same even within us. Physical pain or restlessness or discomfort are the most immediate obvious things. As our mind becomes quieter and quieter we are able to move from the obvious to beyond it.

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Wrt rain, another observation from a couple of years ago.

I’d spent a little over a week living in a very dry area. It was a valley in the middle of some hills, and there was a lot of open space in this valley, the whole place was dry and dusty. After a few days, it started raining. It kept raining for the next few days.

Day by day, I could witness a dramatic transformation.

At first there was just a bit of greenery here and there. Gradually the landscape became greener and greener, and towards the end of my stay there, the whole place had started to become rich and lush!

It did make me wonder… where did all this greenery and life come from in what earlier seemed to be dry and lifeless land? Its not that someone planted all that grass and shrubs overnight… the seeds had been there all the time! Underground. Just that the rain enabled them to sprout and flourish… The rain had brought out the potential hidden in that soil…!