I spent the past two days at a meditation training weekend, which basically means I spent a lot of time sitting with my thoughts. This is both easy (what could be easier than sitting around all weekend?), and hard (with no distractions, I have to face everything that’s going on between my ears).
Fortunately, the sitting is broken up with periods of walking meditation, which I particularly enjoy. To me, walking meditation is more than just a break to get my circulation going and fend off drowsiness. I see it as a simple footbridge between sitting on the cushion and everything else, what we somewhat humorously call “post-meditation.” Walking is such a basic element of humanity that I figure if I can do that mindfully, there’s a smidgen of hope that maybe I can bring some of the calm, stillness and equanimity that I (sometimes) find on the cushion into the rest of my life.
Walking meditation also has a very strong connection to the path quality of practice, and life. Pema Chodron says, “The path ... is not prefabricated. It doesn’t already exist. The path that we’re talking about is the moment-by-moment evolution of our experience ... It comes into existence moment by moment and at the same time drops away behind us.” We can’t see where we’re going, because it doesn’t exist until we create it. We can only see where we’ve been. I find this incredibly hopeful, particularly as I reflect on my own life over the past several years and see the path I have created simply by the choices I’ve made and the steps I've taken. I look forward to the unfolding of that path with each step.
Photo courtesy http://www.flickr.com/photos/alicepopkorn/ / CC BY-ND 2.0
