I started reading An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life, by the Dalai Lama. A couple years ago, actually. I bought this book while we were still living in New York City, so it must have been the early part of the decade (what the heck are we going to call this decade? The Double-Ohs? The Two Thousands? That just doesn't work!). I read about a chapter and a half, stopped, and then carried it with me from apartment to apartment, office to office, and state to state, until very recently, when I took it off my shelf, found my book marker, and started reading again.
I don't know why I put it down for so long! The Dalai Lama is a wonderful writer. He has a plain and simple style that communicates this agreeable personality, this sense of patience and humor, while laying some incredibly heavy stuff down in a way that makes you feel the opposite of heavy: it makes you feel light and free, like putting the book down to look up at the sky and take a deep breath and let your mind wander a bit is exactly what he intended for you to do. Relax. Pause. Breathe.
I recently underlined this passage that is, to me, a new way of looking at meditation: "[W]e must nurture new inclinations by deliberately cultivating virtuous practices. This is the true meaning and object of the purpose of meditation." Meditation is a practice and a tool, a method of freeing ourselves from anger and expectation and all of our negative or afflictive emotions, and of growing closer to achieving Dharma, or the state of being free from sufferring. It can be both analytical and spiritual.
Heavy stuff, right? And yet its not.
Every day, on my commute to and from work, my train crosses the Potomac River. When I started taking this train, I promised myself that every time I crossed the river, I would stop whatever I was doing to observe the water, the wide sky above it, the light falling on it. I made this promise because something about the river draws me to it and brings me peace and calm, and I wanted to remind myself to appreciate it and give thanks for it.
In the mornings now, the sky and land and water are soft shades of gray and blue and brown. The freight train travels along a parallel trestle to the south, with brick pilings and rusty iron rails. This light, this landscape, they are a thousand home-comings during the last 20-some years I've lived up and down the northeast corridor: traveling alongside a distant freight train, heading north, the gentle rocking of the road, a quiet happiness in my heart, the anticipation of my mother's cooking and days that unwind slowly, with time for naps and walks and conversation and reading.
There's a bit of dusk left in the evenings now as the train brings me to my current home. I've been able to catch the last moments of sunset as the train emerges from its tunnel and travels up and over the bridge. The light glints off the river with ferocity, gold and blinding. It obliterates the sounds around me and takes me back to vacations at the beach, or evening drives when we pulled off the road to step out of the car and squint into the sun setting over some body of water. This is something I've done all my life, on the cold, rocky beaches in New Hampshire, along the Long Island Sound, or on the Virginia side of the Potomac, facing Georgetown's spires:
Nurture new inclinations by deliberately cultivating virtuous practices.
Relax. Pause. Breathe.
Give thanks. Happy Friday Zen.
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