Take out your ear plugs
Snoring is one of the most wonderful and precious sounds we can hear (if we are fortunate enough).
‘What?’ you say. ‘Did I hear you correctly?
Fortunate to hear snoring? It’s precious and wonderful?’
Many of us have been woken or kept awake by proximity to snoring – in the same room or even through walls or floors. A resonant snoring can be likened to a saw, a freight train, uneven gravel being poured or crushed – sounds which might have their place but not when we are trying to sleep. Then they go from being a ‘sound’ (an objective label which we just calmly notice) to a ‘noise’ (which can often be a subjective label of something unwelcome).
As is so often the case with our sense connection with the world around us, how we assess that input through our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body or mind depends on our judgement of it (wanting it or pushing it away) and not the pure awareness of simply what is.
Yet another opportunity to ‘get out of the way’, turn off our ‘me, me, me’ filter and be open and curious about things from another perspective. Walk in another’s shoes, be a fly on the wall, take out your ear plugs. Whatever image works for you. Turn down our inner volume and receive the music around us.
Which brings me back to snoring. And the magical music of hearing the breathing of a living being – is that not precious, is that not wonderful?
Because someday, that breathing – of ourselves, beings beloved by us, those we are familiar with, those we have difficulty with, everyone – will cease in its own time.
Savour the tunes now.
With a bow
Maitripushpa
inspired yet again by our wondrous cat, Vajra, with his sweet cat snores
