Gayani Jayathilake

[Trigger warning: This is a meditation story where the mind goes badly off track but comes back to where it began to understand.]

I apologize to all my meditation teachers for posting this where I am seen totally missing the point of lessons learnt probably on day one itself. I hope you look at it as a funny story where I am being very honest. Nothing more.

There I was seated for my morning meditations, watching the present outside world. The temperature within my present view was 0 degrees Celsius. And it started snowing. This did not matter as I opened the door every morning be it in sun, hail, rain, snow to connect with the outside nature for a few minutes and then went through my chosen meditation type for the day while there. This morning I had chosen to engage in Kasina meditation. And my focus was on the pile of snow before me, over the heap of composting leaves and sticks in garden. I focused on the water element of the solidified pile. And from there how that icicled water and this liquified water within my body were the same.

Stepping back here for a short description: Kasina meaning whole, is a meditational practice blending one’s perception with a chosen element. The beauty of focusing to a level where we see it even with eyes closed, then notice how after a while we unsee it. Absorbing then dissolving at the same time to merge as one. To say there is no ‘I’ but a collective unity. It’s about taking on a non dualistic view when we focus deeply and merge with an element. Thereby making it whole. I personally being a nature junkie chose this type of meditation often as it’s all about focusing on elements such as earth, water, fire, wind, air. What more do I need than a quality wallow in the garden with sun or gloom in my hair, and dirt at my heels. Now getting back to the story.

Before long there was a movement between me and the pile of ice. Falling flakes of snow. Months ago this would have become a distraction. Now that same distraction dribbled into an amusing side-track I enjoyed along the way. I turned it into a different type of meditation altogether. Before long my mind began saying that pile of snow water and the falling snow water are the same. And also the same running inside me. Same. It was hard enough focusing on two objects. Now there I was trying to focus on three.

It was as though I started connecting from here to there. Like learning to draw a line by connecting the dots. Things at this point were moulding themselves together in a larger scale.

And then a vehicle drove by. Usually I dismiss noises like an easy peasy piece of pie, as just another noise heard in the background. (You can read more on how to do this in this article : Saw myself, through me. I was never there to begin with.) More vehicles rumbled forward and so fourth in rambling hurry.

Normally I would have pictured it as something just happening in the present moment and when it left it was in the past. But today it connected to my dotted image. The car’s fuel moulded into the dotted image. Fluid in that, water in me. Same same. And I pictured them as mere extensions of me. A jet burred in the sky. And suddenly there I was not connecting through one element but many more. Air, light, earth, fire. I was connecting with all of them to my dismay. Same same. Humans trying to expand themselves with invented extensions to go faster like the winds, to fly like the clouds, pressing trees to keep everyone informed, inventing velcro like burdock that stuck to your socks, solar panels to be the sun, plant boxes to bring the outside inside, living seawalls to protect and be the sea, bullet trains to be the kingfisher, wind turbines like whale fins, submarines to be fish, paint with hydrophobic properties like lotus leaves, needles so tiny like a mosquitoe’s that we don’t feel them, self cooling buildings like termite mounds, sunscreen, synthetic fertilizer. Aren’t we just trying to mould ourselves more to be nature? Aren’t we trying to be nature? At the same time aren’t we trying to replace nature building all this to keep nature out?

Talk about the monkey mind really going off point. Coming back to my meditation I noticed how the snowing had stopped, and I returned to where I had begun. That water and this water. Same, same.

[Ideal background music: The flight of the bumblebee]