SO, our usual summer of sunny days and dreich days is coming to an end. I noticed some very pretty pink, then violet and white, petals had fallen off their flowers and landed on the little stones that line parts of our garden. The contrast was striking and, to my mind at any rate, very aesthetically pleasing. I looked at them and enjoyed the sensations that they created in my mind, and though it was early morning and I had a busy day ahead, I lingered. I focused very lightly and in a relaxed way so as just to enjoy the moments for as long as the sensations remained, and became as clearly aware of how I felt as possible, without making any strained effort. In total I guess this lasted about 40 seconds or so.
Had I been mindless I’d still have noticed the petals, probably thought, “they look nice”, then went on my busy way. I would have received maybe two or three seconds of very light, shallow moments of enjoyment. Instead I magnified the intensity of the pleasure I received by, say, 30 or 40-fold; and I made the experience last 20 times longer than it otherwise would have.
This, here in Hamilton. I’m not long back from a holiday in Switzerland, where we saw some of the world’s most awesome sites, including major glaciers, and the Matterhorn, from way up on high. So my experience of the petals was not in that league. But that’s not the point. The point is that I’m no longer in Switzerland. I’m in Hamilton. Here is where matters, wherever here is for you at any given moment.
What is available for you right here, right now? This is local. As local as it gets. You have five senses. What do you see right now? What sounds exist for you right now? Keep the attention relaxed, effortless, light as a feather. What are you in touch with, I mean physically? A chair, the floor, a pavement or path, the clothes on your back, on your shoulders, on your feet? What do they actually feel like right now?
Are you eating while you read this? If so, what are the tastes, and how does this register in your mind? Hopefully, as enjoyable, a pleasure. And is there any smell around? Be aware in your moment. Don’t let the opportunities to fully experience life wash past you as if you were a senseless being, doomed only ever to be aware of endless thoughts and reflections and moods that your mind commands you to succumb to.
You can do this mindfulness anywhere. That’s the whole point. The magnificent Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, who has led the growing interest in mindfulness in the West since his arrival in exile from his native Vietnam, once told an audience: “Be free where you are.” Sounds like one of those trite positive lifestyle posters you see on Facebook every day. But he said it to an audience of more than 120 inmates of a prison, the Maryland Correctional Institution in Haggerston. He had to pass through 16 checkpoints just to get to the hall. Imagine the situation. This is 1999, and a small, brown-robed old Vietnamese man, sits in front of these restless prisoners and tells them they are free if they want to be.
By the time he finished his talk and mindfulness meditation, many of the prisoners got it. They may be locked up in a jail, often in a small cell, but their quality of mind, their state of mind, the thoughts and feelings that they allowed to come fully into being, they could have the power to be in charge of these. They could be free where they are.
How about you then, in your relative comfort, relative places of beauty? Can you be free where you are right here where you are? Right now in the blink of a moment? I have found joy walking on the pavement along Mill Road, Hamilton. The joy came from my mind appreciating having a pavement, living in a community and society where pavements exist, and my appreciation of being able to walk, and yes, my appreciation of being free.
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