Search Inside Yourself

A large group of people gathered to listen to a talk by a Zen teacher. One guy in the audience got distracted by a fluttering flag and said, “Flag is moving.” Another guy said, “No, wind is moving.” The third guy, the wisest person in the audience said, “No, my friends, mind is moving.” A fourth guy, getting really annoyed, said, “Mouths are moving.”

This traditional posture is sometimes called the seven-point meditation posture. In brief, the seven are:
Back straight “like an arrow”
Legs crossed in “lotus position”
Shoulders relaxed, held up and back, “like a vulture”
Chin tucked in slightly, “like an iron hook”
Eyes closed or gazing into space
Tongue held against the upper palate
Lips slightly apart, teeth not clenched

To quote Viktor Frankl, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.” What a mind of calmness and clarity does is to increase that space for us.