Still Life with Coffee

  It was a chilly evening tonight--definitely in the low 13's--and I decided to make a detour to Starbucks on the way home. I ordered a rather expensive and perhaps unnecessary drink, what is called a "Tall Pike" over in that there place, with 2 milks and 2 sweeteners. Believe it or not, I am getting to an age where sugar is tasting too sweet for me, and I am slowly transitioning to sweeteners. This coffee cost 2 dollars and 83 cents, or something along those lines. But I was happy to be able to have a hot drink to keep me warm during the walk home.

   There has always been something about that beautiful night walk home, alone with a coffee, that has somehow become a kind of spiritual practice for me. I don't normally think too much during this kind of walk. Most of my thinking, if anything, is a kind of review of my work life and what I need to do the following day, as well as a few affirmations of what went well and perhaps what could be improved. But I think that the night walk home has to do with a kind of inner checking in. It has to do with just feeling the body moving, taking a deep breath and knowing the body is solid and planted. If I were to trace it phenomenologically, it would be having a silent dialogue or encounter with the bodily being, and quietly accepting it without words. 

   In case you're wondering, no, I don't treat this as a formal meditation practice; for the most part, I am not using any particular method. I think it really comes down to the journey we make in life to accepting ourselves through a process of beholding the bodily presence and existence. This is a very natural thing that everyone can do, and it doesn't really require any kind of special technique. Perhaps we might describe it as a kind of space between the lines of thinking, words, doing, and planning. It is the kind of blackboard where all of our ruminations briefly go only to be erased again or overwritten or perhaps simply faded out over the simple process of time. It is like the cloud chamber where little particle tracks are made and fade away. 

   It's very important not to think of this experience as an attainment. It is more fundamental to our being and it often comes upon us when we are not seeking it. Sometimes when you are gardening or just sitting somewhere with an apple in the park, a butterfly or dragonfly will land on your shoulder. It seems like it's rewarding you for not trying to chase it down, plan for it or put it in a bottle for safekeeping. What I try to say is: don't try to seek anything. Just be and let go of the strivings of the mind. Then you will find the butterfly and dragonfly are always there ready to befriend you. All they were looking for is for you to lose all your assumptions, and become a kind of child of the mind again.