Looking Carefully
Description:
Set aside five or ten minutes and look
carefully at any object of your choosing:
a flower, a tree, for example. When you have
become used to this technique, try it with
people.
The word carefully means attentively, with
awareness, mindfully, meditatively, with
love, with caring. We can look without
caring at all, and then we miss the whole
point. The word carefully has to be
remembered in all its meanings, but the
root meaning is meditatively.
And what does it mean when we see
something meditatively? It means
without mind, fully in the present
moment, bringing no past memories
or future desires. Simply being in the
NOW, enjoying the beauty of what
the object of our looking offers.
When and Where:
Anytime/anywhere is good.
Benefits:
Meditation is alchemy: it can transform
the base metal into gold, it can transform
a tulip into a lotus of paradise. The ordinary
becomes the extraordinary. This is the way
of meditation. To find the extraordinary in
the ordinary, to find all in the now, to find the
whole in this. As we look carefully,
a great wonder arises, a great joy,
a moment of sheer magic. Try it!
|
