“notice the dog’s tail wagging, the sound of the dog’s feet clicking on the pavement, the clouds of breath coming out of your dog’s mouth on a cold day”
— Joy Rains, from “The stress secret: 12 ways to meditate – without actually meditating” (The Guardian, Feb 9, 2023)
Video of Wally Walking. VOLUME UP! Thank you Susan.
And I think that as I’ve aged, I realized everything is an ongoing process. And that it isn’t something that suddenly you’ve done this work and therefore you become enlightened, right? That you’re like, oh, you wake up one day and be like, oh, guess what, I don’t have an ego. I’m not bothered by anything. And instead, of course, it’s just the ongoing slog of being a human and returning to the practice. And OK, here we are again. That’s bothering me. Here I am again. I’m full of faults. […]
I usually sit for at least 15 minutes a day. Sometimes in the morning and sometimes at night. At night, it’s usually because I’ve forgotten to do it in the morning. Or I had something early, an early flight or something like that. But I try to start my day with it. I also try to do — set an intention every day that I just hold with me throughout the day. And sometimes it’s just like, oh, I’m feeling a little stressed out, and I’ll just say let’s just think about ease. And I’ll say, just keep saying the word ease and it comes up. And then my meditation practice — it differs. Sometimes it’s — I think the core is always love and kindness. That’s what I learned many, many years ago. And that’s my fallback.
— Ada Limón, from “Ezra Klein Interviews Ada Limón” (Ezra Klein Show, May 24, 2022)
DK Video @ Cove Island Park @ 5:53 a.m. this morning. Photos from this morning’s walk here.
David Whyte’s “Blessing” poems are interpreted through a visual journey across the Irish landscape in this short film by Emmy-winning filmmaker Andrew Hinton. Musician and composer Owen Ó Súilleabháin, who has collaborated with David Whyte for over a decade, offers a reflection on the music that inspired the creation of this short film. (via Gratefulness.org)
BLESSING FOR SOUND
from The Bell and the Blackbird by David Whyte
I thank you,
for the smallest sound,
for the way my ears open
even before my eyes,
as if to remember
the way everything began
with an original, vibrant, note,
and I thank you for this
everyday original music,
always being rehearsed,
always being played,
always being remembered
as something new
and arriving, a tram line
below in the city street,
gull cries, or a ship’s horn
in the distant harbour,
so that in waking I hear voices
even where there is no voice
and invitations where
there is no invitation
so that I can wake with you
by the ocean, in summer
or in the deepest seemingly
quietest winter,
and be with you
so that I can hear you
even with my eyes closed,
even with my heart closed,
even before I fully wake.
BLESSING FOR THE LIGHT
from The Bell and the Blackbird by David Whyte
I thank you, light, again,
for helping me to find
the outline of my daughter’s face,
I thank you light,
for the subtle way
your merest touch gives shape
to such things I could
only learn to love
through your delicate instruction,
and I thank you, this morning
waking again,
most intimately and secretly
for your visible invisibility,
the way you make me look
at the face of the world
so that everything becomes
an eye to everything else
and so that strangely,
I also see myself being seen,
so that I can be born again
in that sight, so that
I can have this one other way
along with every other way,
to know that I am here.
Thank you Lori for sharing. Moved.
Each babbling brook delivers the Buddha’s sermons. Countless thousands of poems flow, one after an other, day and night, Without a single word being spoken.
Open up to hear to each of Nature’s sounds. Reflect on Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi’s sage advice about how to sharpen your sense of hearing while you’re on an ocean beach: “There, if you’re alert, you can hear the tide turn.”
Remain alert to hear bird songs. Don’t think, Self-consciously, “I’m listening to that bird.” There’s no need for you to insert your Self back into that explicit role. You don’t need to be some person inside who remains actually conscious of striving to do the listening. Instead, allow your ears just to hear its notes directly. Just Hearing.
Consider all the other delightful surprises of be coming a bird watcher. Gaze up to follow distant birds in flight. Notice how raptors soar effortlessly, aided by the wind. In contrast, flocks of shorebirds, like the golden plover, wheel, twist, and dive in unison. Bird sightings tap into our most primitive instincts and sentiments.
— James H. Austin, from “Meditating Selflessly: Practical Neural Zen”
Gull @ Daybreak. 6:25 am, Feb 21, 2022. 30° F, feels like 22° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More pictures from this morning here.
There is Something about being out and about and walking @ Daybreak as light snow falls.
And in a city of ~130,000, not a single set of tracks on any of the footpaths.
Just fresh fallen snow, silence, and me.
DK @ Daybreak. 6:32 am, January 24, 2022. 25° F, feels like 15° F. Light Snow. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More shots from this morning’s walk here.
I mean seriously. Look at him. Is this a picture of sanity?
First it was a gentle nudge.
She sends me an article. “You might check this out.” I skim it.
“The Ice Man.”
“Ice baths.”
“Deep breathing”
“Inner fire meditation and how it alters body chemistry.”
“You can experience lightheadedness, as the arteries and veins to the brain and body close slightly in reaction to the alkalizing blood.”
“You are inducing voluntarily a short stress response which ultimately will lead to more resilience towards everyday stress, mentally and physiology and feeling more in control.”
Blah, blah, blah. Total Bullsh*t. Whack job.
A few days pass.
She comes at me again. [Read more…]
Here are some key attributes of the voice in my head. I suspect they will sound familiar.
In short, the voice in my head—and perhaps also yours—can be an a**hole.
— Dan Harris, from “Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-to Book“
Notes:
Thinking about swifts has made me think more carefully about the ways in which I’ve dealt with difficulty. When I was small I comforted myself with thoughts of layers of rising air; later I hid myself among the whispers of recorded works of fiction. We all have our defences. Some of them are self-defeating, but others are occasions for joy: the absorption of a hobby, the writing of a poem, speeding on a Harley, the slow assembly of a collection of records or seaside shells. ‘The best thing for being sad,’ said T. H. White’s Merlin, ‘is to learn something.’ All of us have to live our lives most of the time inside the protective structures that we have built; none of us can bear too much reality. We need our books, our craft projects, our dogs and knitting, our movies, gardens and gigs. It’s who we are. We’re held together by our lives, our interests, and all our chosen comforts. But we can’t have only those things, because then we can’t work out where we should be headed.
— Helen Macdonald, Vesper Flights (Grove Press, August 25, 2020)
Photo Salvi Danes, (Barcelona) (via Your Eyes Blaze Out)
I take hope in every politician’s or economist’s statement that Americans aren’t buying enough; in every student’s reference to “sustainability” or “mindfulness”—terms that weren’t in my college vocabulary… I take hope from the growing number of solitaries and the growing interest in meditation, contemplation, centering prayer. I have faith in the capacity of truth, if brought to light and given time, to win its cause, the capacity of love to win its cause. I place little hope in conventional politics, so invested are mainstream political parties in endless, unsustainable growth, or in conventional religion, with its interest in perpetuating its power. Instead I find hope in love, for one another, for our earth. Those of us invested in love can choose, must choose noncooperation. I buy less; I consume less; I take myself off the grid in the face of efforts to force me to remain on it; I dedicate myself to friendship as my organizing, bedrock relationship; I study and talk about how to become, in fact, a society of friends.
— Fenton Johnson, At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life (W. W. Norton & Company, March 10, 2020)
Portrait: Source
“Running is practice for not quitting.”
A line from Robert Andrew Powell’s Memoir titled ”Running Away.”
Unclear why the line stuck after I read it in Beth’s post titled Custodians of the Peace of Mind. But stuck it has. Who’s my Custodian?
Running is practice for not quitting.
It’s been a month. Every day. Every.Single.Day.
Out the door at ~5 am. Backpack over left shoulder, camera in right hand. Both hands occupied, smartphone tucked away, and inaccessible.
I walk.
5 mile loop. 1.5 hours. 50-70 photos. Every morning.
Followed by a photo upload to the P.C.
Then a slow page turn of the pics.
And a deletion of the misfires.
Then a creation of a Google Photo Album, “June 6 2020 Cove Island Park Walk”
Then I connect the Day’s album to the Google Nest Hub Max via my smartphone, which rotates each photo in a slide show on a 10 sec delay.
And, we have a new performance each day.
I’ve moved the Hub Max next to my PC, and there it sits with me, from 7am to 7pm, my entire work day.
Photo’s on the slide show, click, click, click, click. And for that second, I’m swept back to that moment when I took the shot.
During conference calls. During Zoom meetings. During email replies. During text exchanges. Those pictures, that I took, that I made, that captured some beauty in my eye, causing me to stop, and pause, and see…and then snap. They draw me gently away from Work, to the Moment.
Louise’s blog post this morning lands softly. “We call home through everything I do. Everything I create. Everything I am.”
Running is practice for not quitting. I believed this in my bones.
But I’ve quit.
And I like it.
Photo: 6:07 a.m. this foggy morning. 67° F. Wind: 5 mph. Cloud Cover: 68%. Long Island Sound from Weed Ave, Stamford, CT.
Notes:
My mother’s need for order has nothing to do with the chaos of a life with too little space and too little money and almost no chance to make something beautiful of it all. The chance to create loveliness is always waiting just past the door of our matchbox rental. She never prepares for gardening—no special gloves, no rubber garden clogs, no stiff canvas apron with pockets for tools. No tools, most of the time. She steps out of the house—or the car, setting her bags down before she even makes it to the door—and puts her hands in the soil, tugging out the green things that don’t belong among the green things that do. Now another bare square of ground appears, and there is room for marigold seeds, the ones she saved when last year’s ruffled yellow blooms turned brown and dried to fragile likenesses of themselves. The light bill might be under the covers at the foot of her bed, the unsigned report card somewhere in the mess of papers on the mantel, but she can always put her hands on last year’s seeds. And later, in the summer, the very ground she walks on will be covered in gold.
~ Margaret Renkl, from “My Mother Pulls Weeds, Birmingham, 1978,” Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss
Photo: Cindy Garber Iverson
I want to be a monk because I think that would be a very good use of me, he continued. Does that sound strange? It sounds a bit arrogant, I suppose. I don’t mean to be arrogant. I want to be an implement. Something like a shovel with a beard. If I live with humility and intent, if I do what I do well and gracefully, that is good. Beyond that I cannot go. When I speak to children they will ask me things like, if I do enough good, and other people do good, then the good stacks up, right? and the good eventually beats the bad, right? and I cannot say this is so. I am not very interested in speculation about such things. I was never interested in theology. I think theology is an attempt to make sense of that to which sense does not apply. I cannot explain why I hope that what I do matters; all I can do is do what I do, either well or ill, patiently or not, gracefully or not. And I do find that doing things mindfully, patiently, easefully, makes the task far more interesting. I love to cut the grass here, for I sometimes come to a sort of understanding with the grass, and the hill, and the creatures in the grass, and with my legs and arms and back, a sort of silent conversation in which we all communicate easily and thoroughly. Do you have any idea of what I mean with all this?
~ Brian Doyle, from “Because It’s Hard” in “One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder” (Little, Brown and Company, December 3, 2019)
Notes:
Whispering “yes” instead of screaming no…
Try it. If you’ve tried it before, try it again…
and soften into it…
No need for fancy formulas or prescribed affirmations.
No goal.
Just be.
Right here…
One breath in front of the other.
~ Mirabai Starr, Softening into the Pain
Notes:
She likes it best when everything is very, very quiet.
~ Linn Ullmann, ”Unquiet: A Novel” (W. W. Norton & Company, January 15, 2019)
When you get into your car, shut the door and be there for just half a minute. Breathe, feel the energy inside your body, look around at the sky, the trees. The mind might tell you, ‘I don’t have time.’ But that’s the mind talking to you. Even the busiest person has time for 30 seconds of space.
– Eckhart Tolle, from Oprah Talks to Eckhart Tolle (Oprah.com)
Notes: Quote – Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels. Photo: maggie kirkpatrick
It is time to just go into a cocoon
and spin your soul.
~ Sheila Heti, How Should a Person Be?: A Novel
Photo: Chelsea
It’s a blank screen.
At the bottom of the iPhone, there’s a Start arrow symbol: >
Below the arrow, is a timer.
09:00.
My finger hovers over the arrow. Oh, for God sakes DK, it’s only 9 minutes. How difficult can this be?
P: “As we get started, settle yourself in a comfortable position.” Her voice is soothing. Or seductive? Jesus, DK, focus.
The Pacifica app’s headline: “Reduce Stress. Feel Happier.” “Apple’s Best of 2017…psychologist designed tools for mindfulness meditation, relaxation, and mood/health tracking.” Only you DK, only You, can get anxious in front of a Meditation exercise designed to reduce the same.
P: “Sit on a chair or a cushion on the floor…If you feel comfortable doing so, close your eyes…” (Long Silence)
This pilgrimage isn’t to Mecca, not to the Wall in Jerusalem, and not with Him upstairs. But a prayer to the new God. My palms cradle my Smartphone, and the glowing screen feeds me. I was off on the last leg of David Rome‘s journey: As we grow from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, eventually our most fundamental relationship becomes the inner relationship with ourselves. [Read more…]
Live & Learn 