Discovering Awareness Blog

Vail, Colorado

Today was a day of small struggles. Rushed, I didn’t do a formal meditation. Preoccupied, I wasn’t in the present moment much. I’m sure I smiled less than usual.

Even so, there were brief moments of awareness. My wife’s laugh made me glad to be with her. Stopped by strangers for a favor, I managed to notice the deep deep blue of the Colorado sky set off by the snow capped peaks of the Gore Range while taking a photo for a father, son and grandson from Richmond, Virginia.

It’s a pleasure and a comfort to be aware of small things in the midst of frustrating day. It’s also gives me some comfort to be aware of my frustration without judging myself or projecting it either into the future or the past.

Vail, Colorado
Yesterday, my meditations sessions were pleasurable: easy, relaxing, comforting and warm. Today, my session felt difficult, tense, a struggle. The rest of the day turned out to be the same.
Thomas Keating has some wise things to say. He doesn’t thing we should pay attention to how the meditation session itself turns out. “Students don’t grade their own papers.” he says. Secondly he directs our attention outside the meditation room. “The fruits of meditation aren’t found in the meditation, but in everyday life.”
So if I have a pleasurable session, I don’t regard it as a victory. If I have a difficult session, I don’t regard it as a defeat. It’s called a practice for a reason. It’s not a performance. Pleasurable or difficult, I try to end every session by thanking myself for taking the time to practice awareness.
I do look for the effects of awareness in how my everyday life flows. For example, what things get under my skin? Some days though are just difficult and today was one of them.

Boulder, Colorado
My alarm went off at 6:45 this morning. I arose, dressed and went downstairs to find the bell, light a candle and some incense.
At 7:00, Marie and my friend Sandy took a seat next to me and I rang the meditation bell. Twenty minutes later, I rang the bell again and we shared a cup of coffee and some laughs. Great way to start the day.

My friend Pat Johnson from Snowmass gave me some great meditation advice. She said “Just sit. My husband and I set an alarm. When it goes off, we just get up, go to our room and just sit. No thinking, no changing clothes, no cooking, no nothing, just get up and sit.” I love the advice. Even though I’m not very regular at a formal “sit”, when we decide to do it, Pat’s method makes it easy. We often sit when Sandy asks if we are going to. Just the question gets us moving. We get by with a little help from our friends.

The Three Jewels of Buddhism are the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sanga, loosely translated as the Leader, the Truth and the Community. Often a Buddhist meditation session ends with a prayer taking refuge in the Three Jewels. For example “I take refuge in the Buddha. I take refuge in the Dharma. I take refuge in the Sanga.”

Well, on these mornings I take refuge in our little sanga – Marie, Sandy, & Bud. It’s amazing the difference between meditating alone and meditating with friends. In Ringo’s immortal words, “I get by with a little help from my friends;” alternatively “I take refuge in the sanga.”

Boulder, Colorado

Isn’t flying fun? We had an airline delay that extended the travel time from Sacramento to Boulder to eight hours door to door. Racing from the airport to the CU campus, we arrived at a concert eight minutes late but before the Takacs string quartet was seated. We made it. Whew! Now what?

Be present. Observe without judgment or evaluation.

Now it isn’t easy for me to suspend judgment or evaluation at a concert. I’m not trained or educated in music appreciation, but I feel I should be. You know the drill.
Anyway, I decided to just *be* with Beethoven. Easy, sweet, pleasant. My mind wandered constantly through the quartet. Gently I brought it back each time to the music.

Next came Bella Bartok’s Quartet No. 3. The program notes describe the piece as “elliptic, elusive, enigmatic, uncompromising and harsh to the point of aggressiveness.” Talk about judgment and evaluation. It’s a good thing I hadn’t read the notes because I experienced great delight just listening to sounds as simply and directly as I could. Funny how our “higher faculties” can get in our own way.

After a break, Takacs played some more Bartok, this time wonderful Roumanian Dances reminding me of a Klezmer band. I wanted to dance with a table in my teeth.

The highlight of the concert was the world premier of “A Tent for the Sun” composed by 32 year old Daniel Kellogg. The music was inspired by a summer spent the the glorious
Rocky Mountain National Park. Here are Kellogg’s words:

“I watched the valley and the sky from the earliest morning light through the hottest part of the day and into sunset and twilight….I was not distracted by phone calls or the internet and spent a rather isolated two weeks in an intimate relationship with this valley, awestruck by the slow passage of time and the long arc of the sun and its rays. I was struck by the sun’s immense power and how small we are in comparison, and by the stillness and the quiet of a windless sunset contrasted by the deafening immensity of the mountains.”

Makes you want to listen to his music, doesn’t it?

I listened with my eyes shut. I listened with no words, no concepts. My mind wandered. Gently, without violence, I brought my attention back to the sounds that are beyond names.

You never know.