Narrative : The Rhythm of Stillness

 

                The Rhythm of Stillness

(My thanks are  due to my friend  Dr. Soma Sammadar , Professor  of Chemistry, Lady Brabourne College,  Kolkata for providing valuable insights while writing this article. Soma herself a cancer survivor is relentlessly working for stray dogs through her NGO Doddaden foundation. She vaccinates, sterilizes and feeds about 100  stray dogs , furry babies as she calls them  ,  in North Kolkata.)

The Rigveda often speaks of the universe as a wheel whose rim, spokes, and hub represent the rhythms of existence. One famous hymn (Rigveda 1.164) describes:"The wheel with twelve spokes revolves without aging."The twelve spokes symbolize the months of the year, while the unmoving hub suggests the eternal centre around which change revolves. This is a beautiful image of attachment and detachment:

The rim is constantly moving.

The hub remains still.

A person may live on the rim, busy with life's duties, while remaining inwardly cantered like the hub. Wisdom is not escaping the wheel but learning to live from its hub. The Rigveda reminds us that life is like a great wheel. Its rim turns ceaselessly through time and change, while its hub remains perfectly still. Human wisdom lies in learning to participate fully in the movement of life without losing the stillness of its eternal center.

Modern physics, though speaking a different language, hints at a remarkably similar paradox. Light is neither merely a wave nor merely a particle; it possesses both aspects, revealing one or the other according to circumstance. Likewise, we are called to embrace the flowing, relational nature of existence—loving, serving, creating, and participating in the world—while simultaneously remaining centered in the unchanging awareness of the self. The moving rim and the silent hub are complementary dimensions of the same reality.

Nature, too, quietly teaches this truth. Consider the humpback whale. The  whales  spends nearly its entire life immersed in the ocean, yet it cannot live without periodically rising to the surface for breath. It dives into the depths, returns to breathe, and descends again in an endless rhythm. Human life follows a similar pattern. We immerse ourselves in responsibilities, relationships, and emotions, but if we never return to the inner surface of stillness, we begin to feel as though we are drowning. A quiet breath, a moment of silence, or a pause for reflection restores the center from which we can re-enter life's depths. The Humpback whale does something even more beautiful. They  carry that breath back into the ocean and turn it into movement and song. Their songs are learned, shared, and constantly evolving, sometimes traveling across thousands of kilometers in what scientists call a whale-song revolution. Our lives, too, are a song to be sung…

 -Pankaj Mala Bhattacharya