Finley Wildlife Refuge
Taking a walk can bring you back to an equanimous mind, liberated from thinking that’s wracked by the competing mental narratives that push and pull and can contaminate our hearts. Recall your loving heart. Practice equanimity, and be aware of the whole in the midst of the light and dark of the particulars.
In the current swirl of public events, we can still go walking. By turning off the narratives unfolding in the raucous and mean world of media and recognizing their effects on your own personal mind-stream, you can wake up to the local, and appreciate your immediate conditions — what is not virtual, but real and right here — right in your neighborhood and the neighborhood of your mind.
Remembering to notice the sabbath in the breath, the sensations in the body, the sounds you hear, the light coming in through the window of the woods. When walking among the alders, the oaks, the snowberries, the squirrels and all the unseen small beings who dwell on or under the ground, be present to the crunch of fallen leaves under foot.
Experiencing the stature of the natural world, the immediate, in the midst of the human-created swirl, brings you back to the truth of this moment. Now is where you notice the narrative of your busy mind. Letting go of the narrative, you can stand in company with everything that composes this ephemeral, true life. Bringing a mind of equanimity to each and every moment is the challenge that our practice offers.
❤️ Mushin