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is not the airplane that is disturbing you; it is your own mind which is calling it stupid, a distraction, a disturbance. If you don't call it anything, nothing is disturbed. If you simply hear the noise you will be surprised: it deepens your silence; it is not a distraction at all. When it passes by you fall into a deeper valley of silence than you were in before.
Hence the first word of the DESIDERATA:
HEAR THEN THE WISDOM OF THE WISE...
A strange beginning, particularly from a Western poet, from an American poet. This is how all the Eastern sutras begin. Just a little difference is there, and that seems to be because of the Western medium. He has not been able to relate exactly what was happening in his innermost being.
All the great Eastern sutras begin with NOW. "ATHATO brahma jigyasa" -- the Brahma Sutras begin this way: "Now the enquiry into the ultimate" -- not THEN but NOW. The Bhakti Sutras of Narada begin: "ATHATO BHAKTIJIGYASA -- now the enquiry into the universe of devotion." It is never then, it is always now. In fact THEN does not exist, only NOW exists.
THERE does not exist, only only here exists. You will never find THERE and THEN anywhere. Wherever you go you will always .find NOW and HERE. If it had come through a mystic there would have been no THEN, there would have been NOW.
HEAR NOW THE WISDOM OF THE WISE....
And that makes more sense. But the logical mind functions in a different way, and when you use a logical mind as a vehicle it interpolates something of its own: THEN, THEREFORE..... NOW is is never part of the logical mind, now is part of the meditative mind. And Ehrmann is not a meditator, is not a mystic, hence he has missed with that word. He says:
HEAR THEN THE WISDOM OF THE WISE....
Just change THEN to NOW and see how the quality becomes totally different: HEAR now the wisdom OF THE WISE.. . because except now there is no time and except here there is no space. THEN and THERE are part of our noisy mind. When the noise ceases and the mind is put aside, what is left? -- just herenow.
Swami Ramtirtha used to ten a beautiful story:
There was a very great atheist
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