Meditation

Meditation, being still, being with the breath, allowing the mind to quiet, opening the heart, settling the body, settling ourselves. As we sit, the patterns of the mind emerge, and we learn to see them and inhabit our lives with wisdom. Jon Kabat-Zinn teaches that "meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at the bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are." 

A couple of my favorite poems...


I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places,
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives awhile in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for awhile in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

               Wendell Berry


Decomposition

I don't know
and I don't know

what to do about it.
I simply hit a point

where I lost heart for judgments
and was swept

into the voluptuous, harrowing complexities
composing a single breath.

                 Jim Dodge