Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [160]
Later we will use the sharpened tool of refined awareness to cut through illusion, to penetrate reality, while our view becomes more panoramic and less restricted. This is mind-training. We’re gaining more discernment, penetration, and insight. Wisdom.
3. WALKING MEDITATION
In the previous two exercises, we found that we can be aware of our breathing and stay with that awareness while we are sitting. We see that we can sustain and hone our attention. Now we learn to bring that awareness with us into movement. In this walking exercise, we start to bring awareness more broadly into everyday life. Instead of sitting quietly and watching the breath, we are beginning to get more in touch with our body, our energy, and the earth; we are directly experiencing our connection to it. This kind of meditation further helps ground us in reality. It also helps us get our energy moving. This is called meditation in action.
Stand at ease. Erect, balanced on both feet, relaxed; head up, eyes open and slightly lowered. Start walking very slowly. Step by step, treading the path of awakening by mindful walking.
Lift your right foot, move it forward slowly, place it down. Feel the weight shift in the center of your body onto that foot. Feel the floor.
Then lift the heel of the left foot, pick the foot up, move it forward slowly, place it down. Feel the floor; feel the center of gravity shift again in your hips onto the other foot. Lift the right foot, with heel first, and then the rest.
Break each step down into parts: lifting a foot, moving it forward, placing it down, feeling the shift of the center of gravity onto the next foot. Not walking automatically like a sleepwalker or automaton, but very consciously attending to every single movement. Feel the sensations, feel the floor, feel the step, feel the feet—each step a complete step on the path of wakefulness. It has been said that beneath each step on the path a flower grows.
Breathe naturally. Just walking, step by step. Just breathing, one breath at a time, attending to each step, paying attention with full attention; focusing on each step, while letting everything else go. Just walking. Just doing what one is doing, for once—totally involved, one hundred percent; really being there. One step at a time, treading the delightful path of enlightenment.
4. WALKING-BREATHING-SYNCHRONIZATION MEDITATION
Now we’ve learned Walking Meditation and Awareness of Breathing. Let’s combine them. In this way we are beginning to challenge and test our training.
As you breathe in, raise your right foot and move forward; and as you place your right foot down, breathe out. Moving slowly, synchronize each step with the breath.
Breathe in, lifting your left foot; breathe out placing your left foot down.
Inhale lifting your right foot, exhale placing it down. Inhale lifting your left foot, exhale placing it down. Use the cadence of the natural breath—not trying to breathe faster or slower—with each of your steps synchronized with your breath. Place your full attention on walking. Just walking. Just breathing. Just being. This is enough, and more than enough. To just do what we’re doing, and be what we are—this is the fullness of meditation, of essential being. Let the thoughts, feelings, and sounds go. Don’t be distracted by the scenery. Just let the sights and sounds go by, let them wash over and pass through. Just walking—just right.
5. STANDING AND WALKING BACKWARD MEDITATION
Practicing this meditation heightens your presence of mind and brings you another step closer to razor-sharp awareness. As you project awareness backward, you are enhancing your wider, multidimensional, global awareness.
We begin this meditation by standing, solidly grounded and erect. As you will see now, even with your eyes closed, in this case, walking backward is really going forward on the path.
Stand, stand like a tree.
Relax, breathe, let everything go.