The practice of meditation resembles an autumn day. Rather than focusing on particular thoughts and emotions - our usual habit - we allow the mind instead to settle into its natural state: vast and spacious, like an alpine sky. This is not a "spaced-out" sort of vastness, however. For within this wide-open awareness, our attention is paradoxically able to become crisp and clear, like a Fall morning.
Then, as our thoughts and emotions arise one by one within that spaciousness, they manifest themselves as vivid and shimmering, like autumn leaves dancing in the wind.
Identifying with the sky of awareness instead of with the particular content of our thoughts and feelings, we practice amazement at the fact that they could arise at all! Like hiking a mountain trail and coming around a corner to find a grove of aspen or cottonwood radiating in golden glory, we feel the awe and wonder of our life here on earth!
Photos: (Top) Aspen leaves and stupa at the Shambhala Mountain Center, Red Feather, CO, September 29, 2014; (Second) Lichen-covered rocks, Engelmann Spruce and Sugarloaf Mountain, Snowy Range, WY, October 14, 2014; (Third) Cottonwood tree and foothills, near Bellvue, CO, October 14, 2014; (Bottom) Rocky cliffs, Cottonwood tree, and the Poudre River, near Fort Collins, CO, October 13, 2014
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