“It’s of great importance that we practice the Dhamma. If we don’t practice, then all our knowledge is only superficial knowledge, just the outer shell of it. It’s as if we have some sort of fruit but we haven’t eaten it yet. Even though we have that fruit in our hand, we get no benefit from it. Only through the actual eating of the fruit will we really know its taste.” Ajahn Chah
March 29, 2025. Today is Nyepi, Balinese New Year. Everything is quiet. Everything. Well, the white herons still fly back and forth to their home in Petulu; the red squirrels continue to chase each other up and down the coconut palms; the little munias still come to the edge of the pool to take their daily baths; the tiny geckos still dart along the bedroom walls; the soft rain still splashes in the garden. But all human activity is silent. There is absolutely no traffic: none. No one is out walking: no one. Everyone is at home. Not a single shop is open. The television and radio stations are silent; all electricity, including internet, is officially shut down. The island’s only airport is closed; airlines have cancelled all 428 flights for today.
In the quiet, there is an amazing grace.
Nyepi is a Balinese holy day, a time for spiritual reflection, purification, forgiveness and renewal. It is a sacred time of personal and community inquiry: a day to go inward. It is a time for all to pause and contemplate and recommit to personal and collective spiritual practices that go beneath form to individual minds and hearts in tune with deepest value.
The Buddha would approve. In his final teaching, he famously invited his followers to “… be islands unto yourselves, refuges unto yourselves, seeking no external refuge.” I could, of course, mistakenly think that, in this, he was directing me to simply invent or pick and choose whatever was familiar and comfortable. Like my Nyepi day, however, he was inviting me, rather, into an ongoing and patient and intimate personal reflection and inquiry: what of the Dhamma applies for me with this that is arising in this moment? Where is dukkha, suffering? It’s cause? It’s end? How does this work? What is needed? Here? Now? What is wholesome?
My overloaded bookshelves back at home remind me that I can, sometimes, misunderstand. I can so easily equate my spiritual practice with conceptual understanding or personal “expertise.” I might take comfort in participating in lots of rituals or retreats or with a special counting of lots of hours of meditation practice. These all, of course, can be of value but they may not ultimately be of real use in ending my suffering unless I further deepen those conceptual understandings and practices through quiet and very personal reflection and ongoing renewal of the kind that Nyepi invites. Without this deeper inquiry, my spiritual practice could become simply another narcissistic pursuit of my little ego.
On this holy day, the entire Balinese community invites me to join them in cultivating an ever-deeper unfolding and trust in the power of unconditional presence, curiosity and kindness. 
I am invited to slow down, to release activity, distraction, identification and overwhelm. In patiently cultivating this kind of awareness, I come to a simple and diligent practice, creating over and over and over again, within my own being, the conditions for deeper insight to simply arise. It’s like this now; not mine, not certain; just this. What is here? What is wholesome? Like fruit ripening, this isn’t something I DO. Offering the needed conditions, with kind, interested, present-centered practice, fruit ripens seemingly unbidden, like grace.
When I am in Bali, this quiet, Hindu remembrance of Nyepi reminds me: to consider, to receive, reflect, forgive, taste. I nourish and water seeds of understandings as they emerge in their own way and time. I release a bit of my ego’s inclination to push or plan or own. I learn to recognize and receive as the harvest, in seeming mystery, simply unfolds. With this level of presence, I ripen into a deep knowing that, with care and wholesome intention, my spiritual practice inevitably bears rich fruit in deeper wisdom and joy.
Keeping Quiet
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth
let’s not speak in any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment,
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
Pablo Neruda