Mindfulness can be everywhere...
I have an immense appreciation of mindfulness meditation because it gives me the ability to focus on what's happening right in front of me with a Beginners Mind, to concentrate on what's important, what's real.
Somewhere, I'm not entirely sure where it was, I read the analogy of a very young child, sitting at a table, playing with an object she had picked up. Completely absorbed in the object in her hand, she turned it over and over, looked at it from all sides, banged it on the table, put it in her mouth. Clearly she didn't know what it was, but equally clearly she was trying it out in different ways to see what it could or would do.
It was a spoon.
A classic example of mindfulness and seeing with a Beginners Mind. As we get older, we don't much look at things with such an open and enquiring beginners mind anymore. We become pretty sure about things; we "know things". We become experts. We become convinced of the correctness of our views. When our mind becomes expert, we are not mindful anymore. Our mind is then not fully mindful to the process in front of us. In everything we should try to remain a beginner. Even in our mindfulness practice we should remain a beginner. And we can find an opportunity to practice mindfulness anywhere, everywhere.
With this in mind, I discovered a wonderful article by Nonin Chowaney, a brush calligrapher and Zen master in the Soto tradition. He writes:
I like to take the dharma where I find it. By “dharma,” I mean truth, and by “taking it where I find it,” I mean anywhere, from anything that manifests it, or from anyone who writes about it. I define “truth” as “things as they are,” or sometimes, “words that describe things as they are.” When things, events, or words manifest truth, we intuitively know it, and we can learn from it. Neither Zen Buddhist practitioners nor followers of any other spiritual paths have an exclusive franchise for either understanding or manifesting the truth of human existence, so I don’t limit my activity to temple life or my friends and acquaintances to Zen practitioners.
Nor do I limit my reading and study to Buddhist books. I love to read poetry, and frequently, I write articles and give talks on either specific poets and poems that speak to me not only about life as I see and experience it but also in ways that I’ve read and heard before over my thirty-five years of Zen Buddhist practice and study.
..... All of them have discerning eyes and are able to see “things as they are.” When they write poems about these experiences, we are able to share their insights, and when these insights are the same as our own, they confirm our own experiences and function as a spiritual second opinion.
William Stafford, poet, had a clear eye for the truth of our existence. (this poem appears in The Way It Is, New and Selected Poems, published by Graywolf Press in 1998.)
You Reading This, Be Ready
Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life–
What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems
In this poem, Stafford focuses on the here and now, what’s right in front of us, in the same way that Zen Masters tell us to focus on “just this,” this moment and this place, for this is all we have. The past is gone; the future hasn’t arrived. The only place we can truly be is here, and the only time we can be here is now. The poet focuses us on sights, smells, and sounds arising and asks us what better gift can we bring to the world in this moment, or in any moment, than respect for things as they are, and he calls it “breathing respect,” something alive and vibrant.
The “aliveness” that this poem conveys is palpable. It says to me, be ready, be ready to live fully and completely when you turn away from this keyboard and walk out of this room; be awake, be aware of your feet touching the floor, of the light coming into the window. This is your life; this is all you have, this moment. Drop what you’ve been doing, drop what you’ve been thinking. Live this moment fully and completely, as an awakened person."
