In the Echo of a Song

During a break at a T’ai Chi Chih intensive with my teacher, Dan Pienciak, I had an experience that gave me insight into what “honoring the stillness” really means. I was playing my flute in a lovely grotto on top of a hill at the retreat center. On a heap of earth, amidst a pile of huge stones, a statue of an angel held out a cup to a stone Jesus, who knelt and prayed, knowing that it was in his own intrinsic nature to drink of the cup of his fate, in faith. The wind blew hard upon the rocks and I heard a faint whistle. I was reminded that, “When the rocks are beaten by the wind, they sing.” I was pondering my own fate, so I picked up my flute and began to play out my spontaneous song as the wind swept over me and over the stones on which I perched. The wind and I played together for a while and when I stopped to breathe, it seemed that the wind stopped too. It was then that I heard the echo of my notes ringing through the forest, and I realized that the real music was in the echo.

I then began to play my flute as if it were a TCC practice – a musical phrase taking shape and moving, punctuated by a pause in which I was absorbed into a “space between thoughts.” I heard my notes ring out again, and it seemed as if the birds responded. The dragonflies danced round my head in celebration. The sun congratulated me with a warm and cordial embrace, and I applauded the coolness of the wind for playing so sweetly with me in the quiet of an afternoon.