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| Dwan Light Sanctuary. Near Las Vegas, New Mexico. October 2007. Credit: Mzuriana. |
In July 2023, I wrote:
I do not have a daily practice of meditation, although I do have two books that - when I read them - create a meditative experience for me: Wherever You Go, There You Are (Jon Kabatt-Zinn) and Fear: Essential Wisdom For Getting Through the Storm (Thich Nhat Hanh).
In fall 2024, I still didn't have a daily practice of meditation, and I set out to change that.
So why did I want to?
Because it goes back to my sturdy little boat, my "higher power:"
In Vietnam, there are many people, called boat people, who leave the country in small boats. Often the boats are caught in rough seas or storms, the people may panic, and the boats can sink. But if even one person aboard can remain calm, lucid, knowing what to do and what not to do, he or she can help the boat survive.
Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace
It is so terribly hard to quiet my mind. My brain wants to churn, churn, churn - to create and then regurgitate, create and regurgitate. I listen to podcasts at night to distract a busy brain that otherwise keeps me wakeful, as it churns through what happened that day, yesterday, or last week or last month or last year or a decade ago, ever striving to rewrite conversations, rewrite entire life story arcs for different outcomes, to turn on my own internal misinformation generator.
And we live in such dystopian times; how do I claim moments of calm, lucidity, and confidence in taking the next right step?
It matters not that my physical location on a given day might be geographically rootless; what matters is that my inner location be constant, rooted with serenity and with confidence that my little boat, which I share with others, is a sturdy one.
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