The Mindful Hiker:
Stalking Silence
Love blossoms when thinking quiets and living begins.
I stop and gaze at the magnificence of a Douglas fir cone bending with humility, enfolding itself like a monk in robes, bobbing in the afternoon springtime breeze, hanging in the momentary hush of the early evening air, made still by the chill just after sunset.
The manuals call the cone’s shape “pendulous,” a word I like very much. I imagine for a moment being “pendulous,” hanging freely, swaying, swinging, dancing through the day, tossed in storms but riding them out with dignity, courage, and faith.
If I were pendulous, perhaps I would not worry so much about the morrow. I would not resist the action of life—free, trusting, wild.
I would not change positions as much and would stay in place more to face shadows and meet fear head-on. I once, during a Buddhist meditation retreat, sat cross-legged for 17 hours without moving.
A zone of peace surrounded me and obviated any reason to move…buttocks settling into the sitting cushion, shoulders drifting downward to find their lowest level like water in a creek, hands resting on thighs without tension, neck and spine forming a straight though not rigid line, head as erect as a candle flame in still air, eyes shut, lips resting against each other gently, teeth and jaw suspended like stars in space.
I was in pain for part of that time but saw no need to run from it. Nor did I need to pursue pleasure. For 17 hours, I hung, pendulous. For 17 hours I was simply a human being, being.
But at minute 1021, I moved, opened my eyes, untwisted my legs, nodded my head, tensed my shoulders to help stretch my back, and then shattered the Grail by saying to myself, "Wow, wait ‘til the teacher hears what I’ve done!"
Pride and pretension are the antithesis of being pendulous.
The Mindful Hiker: On the trail to find the path (DeVorss & Co. May, 2004). Available at booksellers or directly from the publisher at www.devorss.com.
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