“Taking my own personal Sabbath changed my life,” Kyle said clearly, in the unpretentious way we share something simple, personal, yet profound. The Sabbath had been a weekly conversation point between us during its regular chiropractic agreements. She is a young seminar -a student, a special person with both a youthful spring in her athletic, rock climmer step and the appearance of centeredness that manages a rich inner world.
Her academic study of the Sabbath had led her to explore in her own life. ‘They actually took a Sabbath year Every seventh year. Every seven days, a day of rest. Every seventh year, a whole year of rest year ”She shared another time. You can introduce your entire city, the whole nation Rest a year? It is almost unthinkable in our culture where even an afternoon of deliberate laziness is a radical act. In the midst of this bustle, what would it be like to reclaim the day of rest?
Wake up to rest
I, like so many others, am a healing over-doer. For years I found it easier to press in a different training than to give my body a break. I could be in rigid vipassana all day, but just to do nothing for an afternoon would bring me to an existential crisis. I was like the French filmmaker Marguerite Duras when she said: “If I had the power to do nothing, I would not do anything. Because I don’t have the power not to occupy myself with anything, I make films.”
In stark contrast to this compulsive doing, not-doing is revolutionary. It is the essence of the meditative path. Today it is just as revolutionary as when Thoreau wrote in Walden Lake “it was morning, and lo, now it is evening and nothing memorable has been achieved”. The irony is that it is precisely and exclusively in this non-doing that we can receive a wealth that could never be earned.
Go in Monday
While in our Western culture we usually consider Sunday as a Sabbath day, it was in most cultures the cycle of the moon that marked holy days. In the Buddhist world these were called ‘UpoSaths’, days inaugurated for peace and spiritual practice. Lay people would observe additional regulations that are normally reserved for monastics, such as fasting, celibacy and avoidance of entertainment. Other cultures also have comparable themes, from Japanese Zen Roku Sainichi On the Purnimas of Hinduism, until the Mondays of the Cherokee tradition. In the past year, inspired by my Ashtanga Yoga community (another tradition that observed Mondays) I started to make this compliance a normal part of my life.
The power to rest
Here are the three most powerful Epiphanies that came from my Monday:
1. Real peace has no objective
Rest, such as meditation, can easily be converted into a means to a goal. Living in the culture of the Power, it can be another thing to ‘do’ and ‘optimize’. Mondays taught me that it is precisely in the non-doing that the magic happens.
2. Deep tranquility is essential and it takes time
We do not rest at rest such as switching a switch, but more like the meandering circles of the descent of a leaf from a tree. Waves of resistance and agitation occur. They look like a coercion to do something “productive”. It is only by trusting them and letting them pass that my body and mind really relax. It takes time.
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