An excerpt from John Main OSB “The Way of Love” in The Hunger for Depth and Meaning, ed Peter Ng (Singapore: Medio Media, 2007), pp. 182-83.
The saying of the mantra is an act of pure selflessness. Every time we say it, we renounce, we leave behind our own thoughts, our own concerns, our own hopes, our own fears. In saying the mantra, we become “the eye that sees but that cannot see itself.” [ . . .] We gradually learn to look beyond ourselves. We learn to see with a vision that focuses itself ahead of us, In God. In that focusing, everything that we are, everything in our life, becomes aligned and falls into proper place.
Mediation is powerful because it leads us into this order, into this tranquility, into this peace. This is so because our order of values is changed. Instead of being based on the self, the ego, on success, on self-promotion, these limiting factors, it becomes based on God. We discover, in the revelation that takes place in our heart, the revelation when we discover the presence of Jesus there, that God is love. This brings us to the conclusion that unleashes great power: that there is only one thing that matters ultimately, which is that we grow in love. Everything else is secondary. Everything else is consequential.
After meditation: Hafiz, “With That Moon Language” in LOVE POEMS FROM GOD: Sacred Voices from the East and West, ed. Daniel Ladinsky (New York: Penguin Compass, 2002), p. 175.
WITH THAT MOON LANGUAGE
Admit something:
Everyone you see, you say to them, “love me.”
Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise
someone would call the cops.
Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.
Why not become the one who lives with a
full moon in each eye that is
always saying,
with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in
this world is
dying to
hear?
