I see, he said, that you no longer
wish to resume your former life,
to move, that is, in a straight line as time
suggests we do, but rather (here he gestured toward the lake)
in a circle which aspires to
the stillness at the heart of things,
though I prefer to think it also resembles a clock.

In the wet starlight and on the wet ground.
The lake lay in the mist, its ice half drowned.
A blurry shape stepped off the reedy bank
Into a crackling, gulping swamp, and sank.

If you throw a stone into a lake, it makes waves on the surface. Eventually the waves disappear, but just because you can longer see them does not mean that they are really gone. They have just become too small for us to see them. In the same way, we calm our mind by half, half, half... and the waves of the mind become infinitely calm. They never actually stop.

A lake
Is a river curled and asleep like a snake.

The water, that circle of shattered glass,
healed itself with a slow whisper
and lay back

the lake a perfect mirror reflecting the sky and mountains with their stars and trees and wonderful sculpture, all their grandeur refined and doubled, — a marvelously impressive picture, that seemed to belong more to heaven than earth.

Every wave is a watersprite who swims in the current, each current is a path which snakes towards my palace, and my palace is fluidly built at the bottom of the lake, in the triangle of earth, fire and water.

The Lake

In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less-
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody-
Then-ah then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight-
A feeling not the jewelled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define-
Nor Love-although the Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining-
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of that dim lake.

It is as though we had to reconstruct for ourselves a mountain range from its distorted reflections in the bosom of a lake.

God has created wonders with circles. The sun and moon are circles. The eye is round and it's beautiful. The circle is from God, but the angle is the Devil's doing.

And he beholds the moon; like a rounded fragment of ice filled with motionless light.

The earth together with its
surrounding waters must in fact have
such a shape as its shadow reveals,
for it eclipses the moon with the arc
of a perfect circle.
Nicolaus Copernicus, 1543 AD

And dimly seen, a tangled mass. Of Walls and woods of light and shade. Stands beckoning up the Stelvio pass Varenna, with its white cascade. I ask myself is this a dream? Will it all vanish into air? Is there a land of such supreme. And perfect beauty anywhere! Sweet vision! Do not fade away; Linger until my heart shall take- Into itself the Summer day And all the beauty of the lake.

Each of us is like the waves and also like the water. Sometimes we’re excited, noisy, and agitated like the waves. Sometimes we’re tranquil like still water. When water is calm, it reflects the blue sky, the clouds, and the trees. Sometimes, whether we’re at home, work, or school, we become tired, agitated, or unhappy and we need to transform into calm water. We already have calmness in us; we just need to know how to make it manifest.