A caterpillar photographed at St. Michaels Station, Liverpool, but it is about to take a very different journey to a train journey:
CATERPILLAR looking at Butterfly – So that’s what I’m going to be one day? CONSERVATIONIST No, you are going to be a moth! CATERPILLAR Life sucks! CONSERVATIONIST Moths are an important part of our eco-system. And many are beautiful – just a glance at their names will tell you that. Let’s hear it for moths! CATERPILLAR – I always knew I was different! Wow, look at me! |
Meditation is a natural capacity we all have to heal ourselves. It is essentially being yourself, or allowing yourself to be. You can sit down to meditate (or lie down) but I believe you can also meditate without realising it, without planning it. In fact, these can be the best meditations! Your inner self has chosen to meditate. You may be daydreaming, you may be thinking hard, your mind may not be doing anything special at all, you may be running or dancing or crying or laughing - but your soul is at work finding its way. You have let yourself be and afterwards you are – more enlightened about something? more balanced? refreshed? more yourself? less someone else?
To meditate I believe you have to lose all the authority and other controlling figures in your head. Make them take a run and jump! All those ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’, those guilty and inadequate feelings. When we meditate in Eco-Therapy we have rules but these are because we are in a group and we have to make it conducive for everybody else in the group. So we do not disrupt the meditation with unnecessary noise and movement. But this is the only reason. There are no rules as far as I’m concerned for meditation in itself.
Traditions have much to teach us but not as much as what lies within each and every one of us.
To meditate I believe you have to lose all the authority and other controlling figures in your head. Make them take a run and jump! All those ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’, those guilty and inadequate feelings. When we meditate in Eco-Therapy we have rules but these are because we are in a group and we have to make it conducive for everybody else in the group. So we do not disrupt the meditation with unnecessary noise and movement. But this is the only reason. There are no rules as far as I’m concerned for meditation in itself.
Traditions have much to teach us but not as much as what lies within each and every one of us.
Empathic Meditation
Meditation on a sense object enhances your empathy and understanding of the world. This could be a meditation on a tree, a flower, a bird or animal. It may be through one of your senses or through all of them. You could focus on the scent of a flower or the song of a bird. Or you could open all your senses and be fully awake to everything around you. It avoids the danger of excessive self-analysis. After a time, the meditator’s mind enters the sense-object and experiences it from the inside. Eric Harrison, author of “Teach Yourself To Meditate” recommends sense object meditation above all others because of the empathy that it will develop. It is also a good way of incorporating meditation into your life. (The sense object may be the sunlit air, clouds, the soundscape of your environment, or the four elements of fire, earth, air and water).
Meditation on a Bird
And if your meditation object flies away have you lost it or is it still in your heart?
Walking Meditation
The original meditation was done walking. The Indian holy men of old, and Buddha’s first students walked. They only stayed in one place for a maximum of three days, except in the rainy season. Aborigines go on walkabout as their spiritual initiation. Native Americans have the equivalent which they call the “spirit quest”. Zen monks walk in a circle, synchronising their steps. Burmese monks walk extremely slowly, verbally noting each microscopic movement of the foot. Kung-Fu and Tai Chi are developments of Buddhist standing and walking meditations. Walking meditation is recommended because it is generally easiest to incorporate into your life. It can include a sense object meditation. Walking meditation is also good for cold days!
The writings of Thich Nhat Hanh
I recommend all books by Thich Nhat Hanh. He writes about how meditation reveals how connected we all are to each other. This is called interdependence or interbeing. Meditating on the sun is a good daily reminder of this. To meditate on the sun gaze on a patch of sunlight or tilt your face to the sun with your eyes closed, feeling the sun on your forehead and eyelids (the latter is also a very good treatment for S.A.D). Try to get out at midday in winter (the WEA eco-therapy course starts at midday). Without the sun, none of us could survive, not even for the tiniest fraction of a second:
“the sun is our second heart, our heart outside of our body.”
In Western culture we are not used to acknowledging this dependence and vulnerability but how much loneliness we are spreading as a result! We think of our personal feelings as private when “the memories of each of us are not just our own personal treasures. They are living realities that are related to all other realities.” This is a hard thing to realise. When we realise it, the bereavement process is easier. But it also makes it harder to ignore others’ suffering, of which there is an immense amount in this country and the world:
“Aware of all this, how can we withdraw to a forest or even to our own rooms to sit in meditation? The peace we seek cannot be our personal possession. We need to find an inner peace which makes it possible for us to become one with those who suffer, and to do something to help our brothers and sisters, which is to say, ourselves. This peace makes us indestructible. In any struggle, you need determination and patience. This determination will dissipate if you lack peace.”
Where does this peace come from? In part it comes from realising that things are not as they appear. We only see a tiny portion of reality - it is much more wondrous than what we alone can discover.
Biologists can work out from one fragment of bone what an extinct animal may have looked like. The purpose of everything is written within it. Your hand shows you belong to a highly evolved species. And, “when an apple tree produces flowers, we don’t see apples ........... we do not see the latent presence of the apples.” But we may in meditation.
“When we look at a chair, we see the wood, but we fail to observe the tree, the forest, the carpenter, or our own mind.” (Also the sunlight which nourished the tree). But we may in meditation.
When you choose a subject
“identify with it, merge with it, like a grain of salt entering the sea in order to measure the saltiness of the sea.”
All quotations above from “the sun my heart” Thich Nhat Hanh
“the sun is our second heart, our heart outside of our body.”
In Western culture we are not used to acknowledging this dependence and vulnerability but how much loneliness we are spreading as a result! We think of our personal feelings as private when “the memories of each of us are not just our own personal treasures. They are living realities that are related to all other realities.” This is a hard thing to realise. When we realise it, the bereavement process is easier. But it also makes it harder to ignore others’ suffering, of which there is an immense amount in this country and the world:
“Aware of all this, how can we withdraw to a forest or even to our own rooms to sit in meditation? The peace we seek cannot be our personal possession. We need to find an inner peace which makes it possible for us to become one with those who suffer, and to do something to help our brothers and sisters, which is to say, ourselves. This peace makes us indestructible. In any struggle, you need determination and patience. This determination will dissipate if you lack peace.”
Where does this peace come from? In part it comes from realising that things are not as they appear. We only see a tiny portion of reality - it is much more wondrous than what we alone can discover.
Biologists can work out from one fragment of bone what an extinct animal may have looked like. The purpose of everything is written within it. Your hand shows you belong to a highly evolved species. And, “when an apple tree produces flowers, we don’t see apples ........... we do not see the latent presence of the apples.” But we may in meditation.
“When we look at a chair, we see the wood, but we fail to observe the tree, the forest, the carpenter, or our own mind.” (Also the sunlight which nourished the tree). But we may in meditation.
When you choose a subject
“identify with it, merge with it, like a grain of salt entering the sea in order to measure the saltiness of the sea.”
All quotations above from “the sun my heart” Thich Nhat Hanh