Mindful Discontent
Today's walk took place from Finch to Steeles avenue, along Willowdale Road. I decided that for my meditative walking journal for this course, I am going to use mantra for each step I am walking, so that it helps me better anchor my attention to the body. This especially worked well on the busy street, where many cars were making turns and passing by. Each step I took coincided with the sound from the mantra, "Na-mo-a-mi-to-fuo", which is a kind of Buddhist homage to the Buddha of great vows. The sounds of a mantra can be anything, but this mantra felt resonant and powerful for me; it always has, in fact, and was my entry point to learning meditation in 2006.
Some obstacles: there is no such thing as "solitary" walk along this particular street! I felt myself more often than not needing to yield to turning cars, be wary of the many intersections along the busy road, and stay to the right to let cyclists and faster walkers pass. I had to learn to harmonize with others while maintaining my mantra walk, which always feels challenging because I am impatient with stops. In order to harmonize, I needed to stop grasping at the mantra itself, and to see it instead as an object floating in mind that comes and goes. Have you ever seen a rubber duck bobbing in the bathtub? That's how loose the words of the mantra felt to me. It was very relaxed.
Around half way through the walk, the mantra felt like it was forming a baseline for my walking pattern, and I felt a sense of rhythm. The mantra grounded me so that, even when I was going into wandering and often random thoughts, the thinking did not stay with me, and it certainly didn't become tense. Instead, the thoughts were like wafts of smoke. I suddenly discovered that walking could be a joy when there is nothing in particular to debate, construct, prove, etc. My mind truly felt relaxed joy without trying to strive for any kind of state of happiness.
At times, I could also observe my resistance to the meditation. This took the form of trying to 'get ahead' of the practice itself to know (cognitively) what's it's for and its implications. Or I would get into this habit of trying to impose an interpretive framework to "explain" what was happening. This made me tense. But every now and then, I saw snatches of beauty: flowers growing in the gardens, colorful weeds sprouting from the sidewalks, a tree branch lowering itself to grace my forehead as I passed by. And in those moments I had a feeling of perfection already being present if only I am present too and not trying to grasp at ideas.
The hazards of being a doctoral student and doing this kind of work is that there is such a craving to form intellectual theories around experiences. This seems to be an impediment to deep discovery, because it doesn't allow unknowns to surface. So I think I need to do better to stay with the method and not to indulge these wandering ideas.
Some obstacles: there is no such thing as "solitary" walk along this particular street! I felt myself more often than not needing to yield to turning cars, be wary of the many intersections along the busy road, and stay to the right to let cyclists and faster walkers pass. I had to learn to harmonize with others while maintaining my mantra walk, which always feels challenging because I am impatient with stops. In order to harmonize, I needed to stop grasping at the mantra itself, and to see it instead as an object floating in mind that comes and goes. Have you ever seen a rubber duck bobbing in the bathtub? That's how loose the words of the mantra felt to me. It was very relaxed.
Around half way through the walk, the mantra felt like it was forming a baseline for my walking pattern, and I felt a sense of rhythm. The mantra grounded me so that, even when I was going into wandering and often random thoughts, the thinking did not stay with me, and it certainly didn't become tense. Instead, the thoughts were like wafts of smoke. I suddenly discovered that walking could be a joy when there is nothing in particular to debate, construct, prove, etc. My mind truly felt relaxed joy without trying to strive for any kind of state of happiness.
At times, I could also observe my resistance to the meditation. This took the form of trying to 'get ahead' of the practice itself to know (cognitively) what's it's for and its implications. Or I would get into this habit of trying to impose an interpretive framework to "explain" what was happening. This made me tense. But every now and then, I saw snatches of beauty: flowers growing in the gardens, colorful weeds sprouting from the sidewalks, a tree branch lowering itself to grace my forehead as I passed by. And in those moments I had a feeling of perfection already being present if only I am present too and not trying to grasp at ideas.
The hazards of being a doctoral student and doing this kind of work is that there is such a craving to form intellectual theories around experiences. This seems to be an impediment to deep discovery, because it doesn't allow unknowns to surface. So I think I need to do better to stay with the method and not to indulge these wandering ideas.
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