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he dances -- all is going to be in his painting. The painting of a religious man, whatsoever the subject matter of the painting, will have some fragrance of religion in it; it is inevitable, there is no way to avoid it.
Sometimes you may not be able to see this, because things are very subtle. A man of meditation, silence, serenity, is going to have a different kind of dance from a man who is in anguish, tension, worry, despair. A man who is living his life totally, intensely, moment to moment, and a man who is thinking of committing suicide -- both can dance, but their dances will have different qualities. The person who is thinking of committing suicide, his dance will have the shadow of death in it. It will stink of death, of a dead body. His movements will not be movements of life.
The other man, who loves and lives totally and has a silent space within himself -- that's what I call meditation -- his dance will also have a silence surrounding it. His movements, his gestures will have a grace, a beauty, a fragrance of their own.
You cannot divide man into parts.
Your question is, "Here in our commune, there is no separate time for meditation...." It is our basic approach. We cannot have a separate time for meditation. Meditation should be spread all over your life: eating, sleeping, taking a bath, or just having a walk, or just sitting doing nothing. Meditation should be in all these actions, inactions, activities, non activities. The thread of meditation should continue underground, whatever you are working at.
A great master, Nan In, was chopping wood. The king of the country had come to see him. He had heard so much about Nan In that finally he could not resist the temptation to go and see the man. Just as he entered the monastery, near the gate was a man perspiring in the hot sun, chopping wood.
Naturally the king thought, "This man must be able to direct me to where I can find the master" -- because it was a vast monastery with five hundred monks living in it. So he asked the man, who was Nan In himself, "Please forgive me for interrupting you; you are so absorbed in chopping wood, you have not even seen that I have
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