An Invitation

Sunday, September 22, 2013:

Everything can be used as an invitation to meditation. A smile, a face on the subway, the sight of a small flower growing in the crack of cement pavement, a fall of rich cloth in a shop window, the way the sun lights up flower pots on a windowsill. Be alert for any sign of beauty and grace. Offer up every joy, be awake at all moments to “the news that is arriving out of silence.”

            Slowly, you will become a master of your own bliss, a chemist of your own joy, with all sorts of remedies always at hand to elevate, cheer, illuminate, and inspire every breath and moment.

Glimpse After Glimpse

Sogyal Rinpoche

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I held the mistaken impression, and many of us do, that meditation is about going inside, shutting out the world and the ability to stop all my thoughts. I desired an ideal atmosphere of peace and quiet, away from distraction, that would facilitate my practice away from the distractions and noise of my environment. None of this is a bad thing, and I do love a walk in the woods, but I find it just as good to stop, clear the mind with my eyes wide open, when in what would seem to be the most impossible situations that are not at all conducive to meditation.

            I discovered my attitude about meditation changing after I crushed a knee-cap from a spill on my motorcycle. My leg was put in a full length cast and, thus, I had to ride the bus to work. I usually took a seat as far to the rear as possible. Because I rode regularly, from my vantage point in the rear of the bus, I began to see that I had become a part of a community of regular riders. We rarely spoke more than an acknowledgement… a hello or a nod of recognition that said, “Hi there, I see you every day and it is good to see you again.” If one of us was not aboard, I found that I missed seeing that person. The hum of the motor, the sound of the brakes, the opening and closing of the doors as passengers boarded or got off at each stop, the conversations and idle banter (and, frankly, quite loud) of the waitress on her cell phone, were not distractions but created instead a sense of comfort and ease. I realized then what Sogyal Rinpoche was talking about in this reflection. That sense of comfort and ease, awake and alert, illuminated and quietly inspired, these are the qualities of a successful meditation and I was doing it from the back seat of a city bus. What could have been considered a mundane bus ride became an invitation to meditation.

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