I was watching an entry on youtube about Mindfulness with Jon Kabot Zinn, a very famous exponent on meditation.
Basically, the premise is that if you can learn to meditate, to become mindful, to be able to fall awake, then the stresses in your life will become less and you will be come a healthier, happier person. The piece itself was really helpful in learning how to achieve better mindfulness during meditation. How to live in the moment, rather than focusing on the past or the future. To acknowledge the transient thoughts of the mind’s chatter but bring your mind back to the breath.
At the end, he said:
If there is anything that I have said today, even one word or not any words, just what I have pointed to underneath the words, rings true to you or disturbs you in some way. Then trust that and see if you can pour a little bit more attention into it and, over time, wonder if perhaps there is something inside you that is nothing to do with me or meditation or Buddhism, that is really important to attend to? And attend to it with tremendous kindness and compassion. It is impossible to go wrong if you take that sort of attitude to it. This is not attaining some ideal. This is recognising who you already are and the beauty that is already you.
And then he quoted this poem:
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott
I’d like to think that is what I am starting to do now.
To look at my reflection and smile at the person staring back at me.
And say ‘I like you!’
I love the words, “feast on your life.” I think I’ll carry them with me. Metaphorically, though; not literally. Literally, and I’d be minding my behind instead of my mind.