There is a Zen story about a man riding along on a galloping horse. He approaches a man sitting beside the road and the sitting man calls out, “Where are you going?” As he passes, the man yells back, “Ask the horse!”
In this short parable, the horse represents our habits and illustrates how we are led along by them, blindly following and not mindfully aware of what we are doing and where we are going. Habits are an easy trap into which to fall. Even when you change your life drastically, you can find yourself soon falling into new habits.
Mindless Days
My day-to-day existence is dramatically different than it was, say, a year ago. I am in a different city. I have made new and wonderful friends. The demands on my time have changed and, for the most part, have all but disappeared. But I still find myself falling into new habits. Habits in themselves are not bad. For example, in the morning I take a walk for a few miles, have a shower and take time for prayer/meditation… it all sounds like a good way to start the day. And it is! But when I do those things mindlessly, just go through the motions, I am being carried along by a habit and am most definitely not living in the moment.
While the physical exercise and taking time for spiritual contemplation can be considered “good” things, if my mind is somewhere else, either drifting back to the dusty, no-longer-existing past or charging off into some imagined future, then I miss being present in the moment. And since this moment is the only time that actually exists, I am, in reality, missing my life. The routines in themselves, as I said, can be considered good things (and I’m not delving into, at this moment, the fact that good and bad are only our perceptions and have no inherent meaning in themselves), but what is needed most is to be present while moving through those events.
I must be present in the walking, feeling each step I take; hearing the birds, hearing the children playing, even hearing the cars! If I can see the bees as they busy themselves being bees and witness the leaves dancing in the invisible breeze, I become more aware of the incredible miracle of the moment. I can then come closer to the miracle that is my life, our lives, our existence.
Walking with Awareness
Now Available in Paperback and for Kindle!
When I began my walk this morning, I took a step and stopped. I looked down at my foot and did my best to feel my shoe and the concrete on which it rested. I did not want to take a step until I was fully present within that step. I rocked forward and back on my foot, trying to feel the pressure I exerted upon the sidewalk and the feeling of my foot in my shoe. Well, wait. It was actually my sock. I doubt that I’d ever once thought about my socks once I put them on. Except maybe if I was getting a blister… I thought about my socks then.
But there was infinitely more to that step. There was my knee and how it flexed. (Maybe a twinge of pain in the aging joint.) I felt a light breeze pass my legs and the material of the bottom of my shorts touching my thigh.
Around me was the sunshine and the smell of the grass and some dogs barking in the distance. But I could keep going into more detail, more awareness of that step. There, within that paused step, were the people in some distant location who made the material for my shoes, the person(s) who assembled it, and the person who boxed it. There was the person who loaded it onto a pallet and the forklift drivers who loaded and unloaded the pallet. The stock person who placed the box of shoes on the shelf and the people who made the box! There was my drive to the store, the people who made the car and those who drilled for and refined the oil into gasoline for the car. There was the cashier and the person who lovingly bought me these shoes as a gift.
All of those people made that first step possible. There were the people who poured the concrete on which I was poised and those who manufactured and shipped it. There were the people who built the roads and the city through which I had taken this morning’s first step. There were also the men and women who kept the city a safe place for me to walk and who made the ultimate sacrifice to make this country a safe place in which to walk and live my life.
I was still standing on that first step and it had the makings of the first two-mile, ten-hour walk in my life. And I’m sure I was nowhere near to being 100% present in that step. I had barely begun to observe the neighborhood around me.
My mind nearly boggled at the thought(s) of how interconnected we are. And I had yet to examine the grass next to the sidewalk; there were innumerable blades I could observe if I cared to. My attempt to be 100% present in that moment, that one step, was more than my teeny tiny mind could fathom.
I took the next step and looked at the world, the Universe around me. I more quickly took another, wondering what this walk would be like if I could pay no heed to the habit of walking and, instead, be mindful with each step, be mindful throughout the walk… and the day… and my life…
