How Practicing Meditation in Nature Can Help Us Let Go

"...being in nature invites us to let go of our preoccupation with our own mind-created personal drama. This happens in part because nothing in the natural world is self- referencing. The redwoods are not proud of their lofty heights, the spotted turtle is not ashamed of his speed.

When we are away from the world of people, so dominated by the needs of the ego, our own habits of self-reference can, with the support of meditative training, evaporate in the morning mist. In such moments, when we lose track of ourselves, we inhabit a simpler realm where there is just the coming and going of experience in the field of awareness. No self, no other, just what is.

As the Buddha said to Bahiya:

In the seen there will be merely the seen; in the heard there will be merely the heard; in the sensed there will be merely the sensed; in the cognized there will be merely the cognized.... Then you will be neither here nor beyond nor in-between the two. This itself is the end of suffering. —Ud 8

Or as the Chinese poet Li Po has put it:

The birds have vanished into the sky
And the last remaining clouds have passed away
We sit together the mountain and me
Until only the mountain remains.

Mark Coleman
from "Only the Mountain Remains: Practicing in Nature" (click to download)

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Thich Nhat Hanh Poem - Going in Circles

Going in Circles
by Thich Nhat Hanh

O you who are going in circles,
please stop.
What are you doing it for?

"I cannot be without going,
because I don't know where to go.
That's why I go in circles."

O You who are going in circles,
please stop.

"But if I stop going,
I will stop being."

O my friend who is going in circles,
you are not one with
this crazy business of going in circles.
You may enjoy going,
but not going in circles.

"Where can I go?"

Go where you find your beloved,
where you can find yourself.

from:
Call Me By My True Names - The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh

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A Not-self Teaching: Who do you say "I am" is?

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Then Ven. Khemaka [a non-returner], leaning on his staff, went to the elder monks and, on arrival, exchanged courteous greetings with them. After an exchange of friendly greetings & courtesies, he sat to one side.

As he was sitting there, the elder monks said to him, “Friend Khemaka, this ‘I am’ of which you speak: What do you say ‘I am’? Do you say, ‘I am form,’ or do you say, ‘I am something other than form’? Do you say, ‘I am feeling... perception... fabrications... consciousness,’ or do you say, ‘I am something other than consciousness’’? This ‘I am’ of which you speak: What do you say ‘I am’?”

“Friends, it’s not that I say ‘I am form,’ nor do I say ‘I am something other than form.’ It’s not that I say, ‘I am feeling... perception... fabrications... consciousness,’ nor do I say, ‘I am something other than consciousness.’ With regard to these five clinging-aggregates, ‘I am’ has not been overcome, although I don’t assume that ‘I am this.’

“It’s just like the scent of a blue, red, or white lotus: If someone were to call it the scent of a petal or the scent of the color or the scent of a filament, would he be speaking rightly?”

“No, friend.” “Then how would he describe it if he were describing it rightly?” “As the scent of the flower: That’s how he would describe it if he were describing it rightly.” “In the same way, friends, it’s not that I say ‘I am form,’ nor do I say ‘I am other than form.’ It’s not that I say, ‘I am feeling... perception... fabrications... consciousness,’ nor do I say, ‘I am something other than consciousness.’ With regard to these five clinging-aggregates, ‘I am’ has not been overcome, although I don’t assume that ‘I am this.’"

— The Buddhist Pali Canon, SN 22:89

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Understanding Meditation as Surrender

"No matter what else we do in meditation, just by the fact of sitting down and giving up the tasks with which we normally clothe ourselves, we are challenging our very sense of self. We’re testing the possibility of giving up these roles and just being what we actually are.

This takes trust. You have to trust yourself to the ground when you sit on it. You have to trust yourself to the practice, to let yourself be held by it and give up, surrender. You want to say, 'I’ve got to do something.' But you can’t do this. We can’t, finally, do our practice, just as we can’t do ourselves into a state of calm or a state of keen discernment. We can set up the conditions for it to arise, and that’s where grace or blessings or inspiration comes in."

Anne Carolyn Klein – "Grounded by The Earth"

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Take time to "meet the Buddha!"

Ajahn Chah instruction on breathing meditation:

"Look on the breath as if it were some relatives come to visit you. When the relatives leave, you follow them out to see them off. You watch until they’ve walked up the drive and out of sight, and then you go back indoors.

We watch the breath in the same way. If the breath is coarse we know that it’s coarse, if it’s subtle we know that it’s subtle. As it becomes increasingly fine we keep following it, at the same time awakening the mind. Eventually the breath disappears altogether and all that remains is that feeling of alertness. This is called meeting the Buddha."

~ Ajahn Chah

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Buddhist Insight into Effective Social Protest and Change

“When we attack injustice, cruelty, and suffering with intolerance and loathing, we make the mistake of believing that hatred can generate compassion and goodness.  Hatred is suffering, and can only perpetuate suffering, not alleviate it. Change that arises from duality is change in content only -- the what’s change, but the how’s remain the same. The oppressed become the oppressors. We only change roles.

Profound change—change in *how* we do not what we do—happens only with complete acceptance—acceptance that goes beyond the dualities of right and wrong, them and us, good and bad.  This acceptance demands our full attention, our complete willingness, our unconditional love, and our deepest wisdom and compassion. There is nothing passive about it.”

Zen teacher Cheri Huber

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The body is not self? Easy to say!

"Consider the human body. Do you consider the body to be yours? It’s very easy to say, “The body is not self” when one is young, healthy and fit. The test comes when one is sick, especially when that sickness is very deep and lasting, or can even be life threatening. That’s when one can really see at a deeper level whether one is taking the body to be ‘me’ or ‘mine’.

Why does this fear arise? The fear is always because of attachment. One is afraid that something which one cherishes is being threatened or taken away. If ever a fear of death comes up at any time, that will show with ninety nine percent certainty, that in that moment one is seeing or thinking that this body is ‘me’, or is ‘mine’."

Ajahn Brahmavamso from “Anatta—Not Self”

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Krishnamurti on How to Discover God or Truth

"To discover God or truth—and I say such a thing does exist, I have realized it—to recognize that, to realize that, mind must be free of all the hindrances which have been created throughout the ages, based on self-protection and security. You cannot be free of security by merely saying that you are free.  To penetrate the walls of these hindrances, you need to have a great deal of intelligence, not mere intellect. Intelligence, to me, is mind and heart in full harmony; and then you will find out for yourself, without asking anyone, what that reality is."

J. Krishnamurti

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