Zahiir, from the Arabic root “to give light”

“I did not confide the entire absurd story to him; I told him that I was tormented by insomnia and that often I could not free my mind of the image of an object, any object, say, an ordinary twenty-centavo coin…”

“There is no creature in the world that does not tend towards becoming a Zahir, but the All-Merciful does not allow two things to become a Zahir at the same time, since a single one is capable of entrancing multitudes.”

“Others will dream that I am mad, while I dream of the Zahir. When every man on earth thinks, day and night, of the Zahir, which will be dream and which reality, the earth or the Zahir?”

“Perhaps behind the coin is God.”

-Jorge Luis Borges, “The Zahir”

 

Borges claimed that in the time of Nadir Shah the Zahir was a brass astrolabe that he ordered thrown into the sea; in Gujarat at the end of the 18th century it was a tiger. The one that Borges found, at the beginning of the second quarter of the twentieth century, was a common twenty-centavo coin dated 1929 with the letters N,T, and the number 2 scratched onto its face.

I have reason to believe that today the Zahir has been reduced to its core substance, the essence of purely mental torment. In my mind as it is in everyone’s mind who has seen it down through the centuries since its creation, it is an idea. I have not seen the object itself, because it lacks form, knowing that all form is the same and the external physical and mental perceptions are preceded by mental states. Behind the coin, the tiger, the astrolabe, there is God, who does not stoop to signal representation because he, she, it, (we?), the unknowable presence, knows that manifestation through representation is inefficacious, since the sign is perceived differently through each set of eyes and each mesh of mental processes that react to it.

The Zahir is unforgettable not because it possesses the mind, but because it is revealed to a mind that cannot grasp the truth that the Zahir is God, and God is in all things – thus to try to escape its presence is puerile and impossible. The Zahir possesses the earth because it is the earth, and it abounds in all consciousness.

Behind the coin there is God – but that unknowable presence, the Universal Self, Atman – it is also before it, around it, beneath it and above it, effluvient and indestructible and present in all the interbeing of things extant and inextant.

Flame

The Gifts of Meditation

Although I have only been meditating for a few months, I have come to the conclusion that the gifts of meditation are probably too many to count.  Meditation is itself a gift.  It is easy to say that, but it needs to be experienced to be truly understood.  After only a little while of practicing meditation, I began to realize that many of the fruits of meditation were ones that I had not expected.  I found myself meditating every day, not only to experience the simplicity of meditation, but also to be with the group of fellow meditators that had welcomed me into their group.  I also found that many of my other relationships were changing for the better, often in subtle and rather mysterious ways.  So for me, from the very beginning, the practice of meditation has been closely connected to the wonderful gift of friendship.

The friendships with my fellow meditators are particularly treasured for several reasons. When we come together to meditate, we come in peace and simplicity.  We ask and require nothing from each other except a time of shared silence, stillness, and simplicity.  We do not come together with selfish agendas or plans.  And yet, by the time the meditation is over, I realize that I feel closer to my friends.  Something has happened during that time, even in the silence and stillness.  Gifts have been given and received.  

Most importantly, this gift of friendship is not limited to my meditating friends.  If that were the case, the gift would not be so remarkable.  After all, most of us have formed friendships with people and work or school, because we spend time with them, and come to know them on a deep level.  But somehow, the practice of meditation seems to open the doors to a much wider kind of friendship and love.  I think this is because the practice of meditation teaches us so much about ourselves.  Through self-knowledge, we gradually become our “true selves,” the people we called to be.   Once we learn to practice meditation unselfishly, we can become open to others in humility and selflessness.  Practicing meditation is really being open to the work of love in our lives.  The simple act of being, without expectation and without selfish desires, allows us to discover who we really are.  Friendship needs to begin in our own souls.  Although we are individuals, we are not isolated.  God himself lives in our innermost heart, and he calls us to seek him there before we look elsewhere, so that we may learn the true meaning of love.  Once we realize the deep friendship that God calls us to, we can embrace all humanity, and indeed all creation, with the peace and love that God has mysteriously and wondrously cultivated in our own souls.  

The practice of meditation breaks down boundaries we thought were insurmountable, and even boundaries that we never knew were there.  We come to know ourselves as we truly are; and, miraculously, we can come to know others in truth, friendship, and love.

Meditation speaks to all of us in different ways.  But I have learned that it’s about friendship – friendship with ourselves, friendship with those we meet in our daily lives, friendship with the world.  The truly amazing thing is that God offers us this friendship every minute of every day.  If we sit down to meditate, in simplicity and humility, we will soon find that in our simple act of love and attention, we are receiving a love that exceeds any expectations we could ever have, from a friend whose love is eternal. 

Beth Cardone 

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