Tales from the Subway

The subway is packed full of people and I find myself wedged on the side  of the door facing the oncoming passengers. An older man comes into the train just as the last of the spaces is occupied. He is sporting a grey jacket and has a look of silent worry on his face. I seem to face him for a very long time and there is such a closeness between us. I feel as though this is a challenging closeness that makes me gently look downward and close my eyes.. Yet somehow, in the muffled silence of the subway, everyone is close together, and there is something soothing about our solidarity in suffering the cramped conditions of the subway.
   As I close my eyes, I only can be aware of the various sounds on the subway train and my mind begins to settle. What about all of this feels so real that I might feel agitated by the closeness of all the bodies packed together? If I stand and contemplate the sounds for long, what will remain afterward? Hearing the sounds coming and going, something more solid starts to emerge, if not fleetingly. That solidness is like a kind of confidence, a grounding in something that isn't always coming and going. It's hard to describe, but it happens in those in between moments when one does not confuse the mind with the moving phenomena.
   I think it's a good practice to do this sort of contemplation if one is averse to crowds. The concept of the 'crowd'  in itself is interesting, because I tend to have a preconception of crowds as a disorganized mass of people, who are considered solid bodies. But the next time it happens, you might consider, are all these bodies separate minds, or is the same mind contemplating the crowd as one? If the bodies are separate, I am forced to conclude that I too have a separate body. But if the crowd is joined in a single awareness, there is no illusion of separate bodies.
    It is distressing to live in a way that sees all bodies as separate. As soon as I have this notion, I live in a way where I am trying to please some and repel others. But who benefits and who is harmed by this view? Who suffers if I try to repel someone from my experience? Even if I think I am rejecting someone else who is separate from me, only my mind can experience the repercussions. I cannot live the experience of someone else, so even the rejection is only experienced by this mind. If I observe my reactions in this way, it will start to occur to me that it's best not to reject at all, since the rejection is really me rejecting a thought of someone else. It is not that the 'someone else' is pushed aside, but it is me that if fighting with my thought emerging in mind. With all this energy swirling back and forth, it's no wonder I will get exhausted from the inner struggle. Letting go of that struggle might begin when I acknowledge that what I see is not separate from me at all; it is all emerging in mind. So what I do with it is entirely mind's business, and nobody else's. If I think in this way, most of my thoughts of like and dislike start to look unnecessary and even harmful, because they just stir up anxiety and distraction in mind. It is like playing a game with myself. Regardless of who wins or loses, I only start to feel more agitated by setting up winners and losers and struggling between the two.
     This practice of not separating others from myself can be done when I start to ask the question:: who is the seer and who is seen? It's worth trying on those busy and crowded commutes, particularly when one is tired and agitated. And I find it works for me to calm my mind and not take my thoughts too seriously.