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Thomas Traherne (c1637-1674)
Centuries of Meditations - First Century
What is more easy and sweet than meditation? Yet in this hath God
commended His Love, that by meditation it is enjoyed. As nothing is
more easy than to think, so nothing is more difficult than to think
well. The easiness of thinking we received from God, the difficulty of
thinking well proceeded from ourselves. Yet in truth, it is far more
easy to think well than ill, because good thoughts be sweet and
delightful: Evil thoughts are full of discontent and trouble. So that
an evil habit and custom have made it difficult to think well, not
Nature. For by nature nothing is so difficult as to think amiss.
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Meditation (musing in solitude) ought to be easy and sweet. Naturally it is.
But if so, why then do more people not meditate? - why is it so rare, and apparently getting ever rarer?
Modern people behave as if they would do almost anything except meditate.
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Since meditation is free and universally available - it must be that people are either afraid to meditate, or at least unrewarded by, most likely bored by, meditation.
Plus there is a large apparatus of addictive Mass Media in place to deter and sabotage meditation.
This apparatus ensures that nothing is, for us, more difficult than to think well..
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Yet thinking well is naturally easy (hence 'common' sense is indeed - naturally - common).
It is 'evil habit and custom' that make us avoid meditation - this is what makes modern people avoid meditation; and the widespread and active avoidance of meditation is a measure of our thralldom, as a culture, to evil habit and custom.
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