Awakening and Rest in the Rhythm of Being
By Roshan Jayasinghe
We often ask where life began or where it will end, but there is another path: to simply notice what is. Without searching for origins, without predicting conclusions, we can look at the living world around us as it moves and breathes. To see all creatures, human, plant, animal, and unseen micro-life, in their shared alignment. This is not a search for answers but a willingness to witness.
Walk with me for a moment. We do not need to travel far, just step outside into the ordinary world of this very day.
The morning air holds a crisp edge, cool against the skin, carrying the faint scent of damp earth. You hear a dove cooing in the distance, the sound measured, unhurried. A breeze touches the leaves overhead, and if you watch closely, the branches bend, not resisting but adjusting. Already, without a word, life teaches us: purpose is not in conquering, but in responding.
The city awakens around us. Cars move in steady rhythm, footsteps echo on sidewalks, some quick with urgency, others unhurried. A child runs to catch her mother’s hand, laughter spilling like sunlight into the morning air. None of these movements ask, Why am I here? They simply unfold.
Pause. Notice the warmth of the sun climbing onto your cheek, the shortening of shadows, the faint sweetness of blossoms carried on the wind, mingled with the sharper tang of exhaust. Even here, where concrete meets sky, nature and humanity weave together. Life does not wait for harmony; it carries on as one continuous song.
And here is where the human difference appears. Unlike the bird or the tree, we often leave the immediacy of the senses and live in constructs of thought. We build explanations, identities, judgments, layers that can blur the rawness of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling. These constructs can be useful, yet they also conflict us, pulling us away from the reality that nature reveals without effort.
What we truly have are the senses. Through them, we are already aligned with nature. Through them, we can awaken to what is here without fabrication. Look closer: the ant line across the sidewalk, the sparrow on the railing, the breeze on your face. This is the ground of awareness. Anything beyond, every theory or ideology, is our own fabrication. To know this distinction is the beginning of clarity.
Awareness Through the Senses
We often mistake our own constructs, beliefs, theories, judgments, for reality. But nature is not known through ideas. It is felt through the senses.
• The warmth of the sun on skin.
• The sound of wind in trees.
• The scent of rain on pavement.
• The taste of salt by the sea.
• The sight of stars scattered in silence.
Through these, life speaks to us directly. To awaken is to return to the senses.
Some may call this mindfulness. But even before it becomes a practice or a method, it is simply awareness, the raw contact of the senses with life as it is.
As you read this, pause for one breath. Feel the surface beneath your hand. Notice a sound in the distance. This is reality, not thought, but sensation alive in this very moment.
I remember once stopping on a long motorcycle ride, pulling over at dawn just as the mist was lifting from the hills. For a moment, I turned off the engine and all that remained was birdsong and the faint rustle of leaves. It struck me then that life is always present, always speaking through the senses, even when we rush past it. That pause was not philosophy, it was pure awareness, as direct and true as the cool air filling my lungs.
Look closer at the smaller patterns. An ant line crosses a crack in the sidewalk, each one carrying more than its share, yet moving as one. A sparrow hops along a railing, pausing to sense its next direction. These gestures are not grand, yet they pulse with the same energy as galaxies moving silently across space. The same intelligence that stirs the tide stirs in the smallest wingbeat.
And notice the metaphors nature offers freely. Clouds pass without clinging, just as emotions are meant to rise and dissolve. A bird trusts the wind beneath its wings, reminding us of the ease of letting life hold us. Rain falls equally on stone and soil, the same way awareness receives everything without judgment. These are not teachings written in books; they are truths given in plain sight.
Strip away theories, and what remains is strikingly simple: all beings bend toward what sustains them. The tree leans into light. The ocean returns to shore. The human longs for belonging. Life moves not through rigid design but through attunement, each organism listening and responding to what surrounds it.
This honesty of life is clearest when we return to the senses. A cat stretching in a sunlit window, the smell of rain gathering in gutters, the hum of crickets at dusk, these are not concepts. They are doorways into reality itself.
As the day passes into dusk, the air cools and carries the faint smoke of a chimney. Streetlights blink awake, and moths circle their glow. The sounds shift: traffic softens, crickets rise, a dog barks once in the distance. Morning belonged to beginnings; evening belongs to return.
And then comes the deepest return of all, sleep. Every creature on Earth knows this rhythm. Birds settle into their nests, trees close their blossoms, even the restless city grows quieter as night deepens.
Sleep is nature’s most honest teacher of surrender. We do not control it. We cannot decide what dreams will come, nor can we hold onto awareness as tightly as we do in waking life. Our senses fold inward; sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell fall silent. Yet in that silence, the body renews, the mind restores, and life itself continues its hidden work.
We resist it sometimes, pushing the body with late nights, bright screens, endless tasks. But sleep will claim us, because it belongs not to our will but to nature’s cycle. To sleep is to be carried, without effort, back into balance.
Perhaps this is why it unsettles us: in sleep, we are not aware. We are not in charge. Yet isn’t that the truest sign of trust? That even when we dissolve into unawareness, life continues to breathe us, heal us, nourish us. Sleep is not absence of awareness but another form of belonging, proof that we are more than the watcher of our senses.
And as night falls, the stars emerge. Some faint, some piercing bright. Their silence is not emptiness, it is an invitation. A reminder that we, too, are part of something vast. Belonging is not something to earn; it is already given, by virtue of being here.
So perhaps the lesson is not to ask what the grand design means, but to notice what is already here. Life is not waiting for our definitions; it is inviting us to participate. To lean like trees toward light. To move like rivers toward what nourishes. To rest as deeply as we awaken.
Like breath itself, inhale as waking, exhale as sleeping, life teaches us in every moment that fulfillment is not found in control, but in rhythm. Awareness, then, is not a final answer but a continuous participation: in, out, day, night, awake, rest. This is nature’s way of keeping us whole.
When you finish reading, step outside. Close your eyes for one moment and listen. Let the air move across your skin, let a sound arrive, let a smell carry. These are the raw truths of nature. If you meet them directly, even for a breath, you are already home.
We do not need to measure the purpose of life to see its coherence. Just by observing, we find that every being bends toward what sustains it. In wakefulness and in rest, in inhaling and exhaling, awareness through the senses, and the surrender beyond them , is enough.
Editor’s Note
This piece continues our exploration of presence and inquiry into the natural patterns of life. It reminds us that awakening is not hidden in distant philosophy but in the immediacy of the senses and that even in the surrender of sleep, nature carries us with the same intelligence.
About the Author
Roshan Jayasinghe writes about consciousness, nature, and the unfolding of human experience. His reflections invite readers to pause, question, and return to the quiet clarity within. He contributes regularly to Morning Telegraph.
