Meditation

It is crucial for you to understand what meditation is. It is not some special posture, and it is not a set of mental exercises. Meditation is the cultivation of mindfulness and the application of mindfulness once cultivated. You do not have to sit to meditate. You can meditate while doing the dishes. You can meditate in the shower, or roller skating, or typing letters. Meditation is awareness, and it is applied to each and every activity of one’s life.

Henepola Gunaratana: Mindfulness in Plain English

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It must be true because the author has a long Tibetan name! Ah, I laugh when it dawns on me that I should have known this in the first place. I remember that state of mind in cross country running in a competitive sense. Attention was relaxed; aware of my breathing and heartbeat, I could feel the runner coming up from behind me; the position of the other runners; the time of my pace at every marker. That was one kind of mindfulness. Another sort of mindfulness was Ice skating on Newman Lake away from everyone else. Alone, in the middle of the lake, I could hear the ice moving… groaning… creaking… and cracking.,, the freezing air crisp but I was warm. There was nothing dangerous about it. I was totally, intensely, aware of my surroundings as, like in a dream, the skates slid across the ice and it seemed that I floated above it: of the world but not in it.

            I see runners now with earplugs going by and wonder if it distracts them from the experience I had as a runner or skater. If so, they are missing out. Even listening to meditative music is a distraction that puts a wall against mindfulness. Meditation isn’t blocking out the world to me, it is about becoming completely aware of where I am, what I’m doing, in the here and now.

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