Stones for Listening

More thanks to Treshnish and the secret stone-painter of the Isle of Mull for the inspiration to paint stones. Sue and I have painted stones together, with our grandchildren, and now with our meditation group.

I joined the group in 2011, and that’s how I met Sue. The group is still meeting every other Sunday to meditate together. Today Sue led (we take turns leading), and we met in her garden. Sometimes as many as fifteen show up. Today, nine. We did a listening meditation, Sue talked about Quan Yin, and then she offered an array of stones and paints for us to use, to paint our intentions for listening.

As Sue’s birthday present to herself, she bought a graceful cement statue about two feet high for her garden. Kwan Yin (Quan Am in Vietnamese, Guanyin in Chinese, Kannon in Japanese) is a representation of compassionate listening. Some see Kwan Yin as a goddess. For us, she is the idea of hearing everything, offering compassion, and maintaining our ground, our center, our equanimity. A representation of an idea. The idea is to hold the ten thousand joys and sorrows, to hear it all, and to know that we are all interconnected, that all the suffering and the joy is ours, and that while we do all we can to relieve suffering, sometimes we can’t relieve it. Sometimes we just have to listen, hold it, and love in silence.