Lightness is like hitting a spring of water inside. A sudden break out from the dryness of your normal reactions as you begin to express from within, rather than just responding to what you see outside. It usually happens when you come upon a quality that hasn’t been destroyed or jaded by time, something very old and inherent in you that has survived birth after birth. Most qualities and talents are developed through use, but are also in some way diluted and changed. Lightness is touching what makes you unique, because it has never changed.

What happens then? Laughter burbles out into your life. It maybe that you’ve touched gentleness, eternal, unchanged gentleness, but the spring seems always to come out in laughter. And the charm and joy of the laughter protects the gentleness that you’ve found. Because someone who is laughing touches everyone, but cannot be touched.

And as the laughter strengthens, two things happen. First comes the tendency to touch the value in others, because innocence reaches the part in people that society teaches them to hide. Secondly the quality inside grows. The spring becomes a river and starts to flow through life in a more open, forceful way. So from a deep private discovery, it becomes a part of your living. Not only that, it becomes a resource for others. You can just sit beside a river and without it doing anything you get in touch with how you really are and where you are going. Perhaps that was what the scriptures meant when they told the story of Sidhartha.