Waiting and Miracle: Our Obligations Towards Studies

The truest method of study is the miracle of waiting.

Pascal writes in his Pensées: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

To sit quietly in our studies takes the most particular type of attention, one devoid of possession, ego, or desire.

Put simply, it is the consent to study for hours and to accept that nothing revealed is itself the revelation.

Study itself is often pursued from the wrong context: movement rather than stillness.

The engine of movement is ego, the engine of stillness is humility.

When we find ourselves engaging with difficult texts, let us approach it with the mind of a scientist, and receive with the heart of an oracle.

Let us examine the truth as it is, not as we believe, and let us feel it doubly so. Let our hearts remain blindly open, for feeling often precedes thought.

If we tend to studying trigonometry all day and walk away without further knowledge, so be it.

What matters is not what we have learned, but the quality of our attention.

The highest love we can provide to another human is that without possession.

To see someone as they are, not as what we wish them to be. To accept them openly, to let them leave gently, and to support them gracefully.

The training ground of love is our studies in waiting.