“What are flowers made of?” a little girl asked me, with a flower in her hand, many years ago. “Petals, calyx, Stamen and pollens”, I replied in a perfunctory way. “What are petals made of?” continued the child. Recalling the biology lessons at schools, I said, “tissues, which are, in turn, made of cells… the pigments give colour to them.” After a pause, as I looked up, her round, wide eyes with a slight frown gently inquired “what are cells made of?..” Realising that one was getting into a sticky terrain and not wanting to sound insincere and belittle the child’s curiosity, the scientist in me calmly explained that cells were made of atoms and ,that atoms were made of electrons, protons and neutrons. I was mentally rehearsing the next possible reply I may have to give by entering the realm of quarks and strings, but found her quietly listening as she silently gazed at the flower. After a little while, “but...what is actually behind the flower?...” was the soft sentence she now spoke. In the stillness that framed her question, the whisper that she drew out of me was “stillness.....silence...quiet...presence.”
Flowers are a symbol of beauty, grace and poise. Science has it that after the advent of plant life on earth, it took nearly 200 million years before the first flower appeared. What this means is that if all the history of earth were scaled to an hour, flowers would have only bloomed during the last 90 seconds! That dramatic change represents one of the great moments in the history of life on the planet. Just how did the first flower emerge? This is a question that Charles Darwin asked and paleobotanists are still in search of the answer. These delicate, yet determined, short lived blossoms create a complete riot of colours, often braving the scorching sun and dust. They have come to be present at various moments of our lives ranging from birth to victory to celebrations and even death.
As I ponder over the question of the little girl, I was touched by the peaceful power and sway the flower held on her! Yet, in the hurried, scramble of most days, as she lugs a heavy school bag with a burdened mind and harassed heart, chugging along mechanically from one lesson to another, in a day full of cares, such moments of quiet are lost. I wonder, “How would some time with a flower enveloped in silence and stillness sound in the day of every child?” Won’t this lend a refreshing connect to the earth and allow the much needed stillness, poise and divinity waft into the child’s day? And, earlier in the day, games, sports and music in the open grounds peppered with all the boisterous shouts and screams under the blue sky and clouds could truly enliven the day.
The flower, sky and clouds would allow them to connect to the stillness that is the basis of everything. This presence can gift them the true perspective and immunise them from feelings of pettiness, hatred, jealousy, anger and bitterness. These tendencies which develop and remain tend to be the basis of violence, war and terrorism.
In our lives punctuated by deadlines, hectic schedules of meetings, traffic jams, soured relationships, anger pangs with dense, thick ‘colonies’ of thoughts that block our clarity, claustrophobic spaces and depressing newspapers, can we allow some fresh air, stillness and fragrance to be with us? Can we set aside ten minutes of the day, if not more, to just be and soak in the still calm that is so strikingly present?
Our country has been blessed with great visionaries and luminaries like Buddha, Mahavir, Guru Nanak, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo and Mahatma Gandhi. If we have a firm faith in their life and message, can we provide space for an orientation to silence and stillness in every school, college, office and home? Can we provide the ambience and space for divinity in each child to manifest, in the true spirit of education? Or will this possibility of silence and consciousness be lost in the din and noise of the ‘isms’, analysis and paralysis, the unfortunate bane of a great, living democracy. Or, will we watch on as the rest of the world embraces these teachings, adopts them and will we then follow them like a flock of argumentative sheep?
As I travel across the villages of Bihar as a part of my election duty as an observer, there is a part of me searching for the great saint who once walked on these lands, an epitome of compassion and mindfulness.
Legend has it that the Buddha once gave a quiet sermon as he held out a white flower in silence. A monk in the audience smiled faintly as he got enlightened, which was understood by Buddha. This was Kashyapa, who went on to sow the seeds of ‘Zen’. In the spirit of the Buddha, may we cherish moments of silence as we pass through our lives and experiences and be like the flower.
Jayanti S. Ravi