Life's a Symphony

Here’s something I came across from Anthony De Mello, he shares:

“Happiness is enoughness.” The secret is to be content with what comes our way, rejecting nothing and hankering for nothing. The great virtue of contentedness. To take things as they are and to imitate the birds in the sky and the lilies on the field.”

I am reminded of a friend who is down with terminal cancer. A fellow pilgrim who has been blogging (http://upekah.blogspot.com) - sharing the journey with others and perhaps, to keep one’s own hope alive, find daily strength, purpose to go on. When one carries such a dis-ease, which does not discriminate, one must be brave to walk the lonely path, struggling with having to heal oneself and remaining strong for the loved ones. Yes, life can be harsh and unfair… the quiet can be deafening...

Tony goes on to share, “A classical symphony. The perfect experience. A symphony has no purpose, no meaning. There is also no clinging to it and no hastening it. One does not wait till the end to enjoy it, but takes in every note, every chord as it comes and lets it go to welcome the next in uninterrupted flow. Any attempt to stop the performance, any “attachment” to a single note, will ruin the symphony…. The less the attachment, the greater the love.”

Sometimes in life, we fool ourselves to think that we have found the perfect note or keep on pushing ourselves to find that perfect note; not realizing that life, in all its richness offers us a variety of notes, which, at the end of it all, becomes a great symphony. A symphony, only if we drop all attachments, possessions, presuppositions, clinging, unforgiveness. The less the attachments, the more we love, the more we live life to the fullest, the more we live in the present, the more we are healed; savoring just the chord of today - not worrying about tomorrow's note.

We all have to end this life one day but right now, my friend may be the luckier person, by the grace of God, to savor every chord that comes along and hopefully be the symphony that will inspire others to listen so as to be able to play out their own - a symphony that I pray, will last a little while longer, by the merciful grace of God.

Tony goes on to say, "Yield to the currents of life...unencumbered by baggage." We must learn to travel light as this pilgrimage journey can be long and the gate narrow.


"How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!"
- Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Douay-Rheims Bible

Finding Self...

This book gives a great introduction to the wisdom and insights of this great writer.

Concealed within these pages (not in the printed words, not even in the tales, but in its spirit, its mood, its atmosphere) is a wisdom which cannot be conveyed in human speech.

Anthony de Mello, was a Jesuit priest, he became famous for his books on spirituality. He was born in 1931, in Goa, India and died in 1987 in the United States of America. A sample extract of his profound wisdom:

"It is a great mystery that though the human heart longs for Truth, in which alone it finds liberation and delight, the first reaction of human beings to Truth is one of hostility and fear!"

Some of his stories, or rather, parables.

"Sometimes there would be a rush of noisy visitors and the silence of the monastery would be shattered. This would upset the disciples; not the Master, who seemed just as content with the noise as with the silence. To his protesting disciples he said one day, "Silence is not the absence of sound, but the absence of self"."

Acquiring Happiness...

"To acquire happiness you don't have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Does anybody know why? Because we have it already. How can you acquire what you already have? Then why don't you experience it? Because you've got to drop something. You've got to drop illusions. You don't have to add anything in order to be happy; you've got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It's only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings."

Anthony de Mello (1931 - 1987)
Jesuit priest


How true! People often allow their lives to be seduced by the noises of the world. Our human condition is such that we are always tied up in the status quo; anxious about everything. Despite our worldly pursuits of the so-called "success", our hearts seem restless...