How to Train a Wild Elephant_ And Other Adventures in Mindfulness - Jan Chozen Bays [61]
Some people report that they love to soak up the rays of sunlight and are aware as they do so that all life depends upon the energy of light flowing from the sun. Recently, however, some people notice an aversion to sunlight, after all the warnings about tanning booths and sunlight causing cancer. The resultant fear of sunlight has caused the resurgence of an old medical problem—vitamin D deficiency. Recently doctors have had to advise people to get at least fifteen minutes of direct sunlight a day, as the sun’s light helps us produce vitamin D.
While doing this mindfulness exercise, some people became aware of their eyes as organs that gather light and bring it into their being, so they also felt a new appreciation for the gift of sight. One person noticed that the beauty of colors and jewels depends upon light. She became aware of this while driving: traffic lights glowed like multicolored opals, streams of headlights moving toward her on the highway looked like a string of diamonds, and the brake lights ahead like many glowing rubies.
DEEPER LESSONS
When we bring attention to light, we find it everywhere, as sunlight and artificial light, bright and dim light, direct and reflected light, white and many-colored light. It shines through green leaves, turning them into jade. It moves slowly across the floor, revealing the movement of the earth. It fills the bowl of sky above us, even when hidden by clouds or the shadow of the earth.
While becoming aware of light, people also became more aware of shadows and darkness. Light is so inexpensive and universally available that we seldom explore the darkness. There is light in darkness, often in unexpected places. If you go out into the forest at night without a flashlight, you may see many kinds of subtle light. This opens the other senses as well—hearing, touch, and smell. You find that you can follow a path by “seeing” it with your feet.
Dark and light seem like opposites, but actually each contains the other and depends upon the other. In the modern world we seem to be afraid of darkness. We leave so many lights burning all night in our houses, on our streets, and in our offices that we cannot see the light of the stars. Light is often spoken of as “good,” and darkness as “bad,” but if there were no night, we could not rest our eyes and our bodies.
Try becoming aware of the “darkness” behind your eyelids. You’ll find that it is not purely dark there at all, but is filled with dynamic patterns of light and color.
It is a very interesting corollary to this practice to put aside scientific knowledge about light and regard it as if it were radiating out of objects. There is a Zen saying to contemplate: “Everything has its own light.” This contemplation can include looking for the physical light each person or object emits or noticing the particular light each person brings to the world.
Light seems to give hope. Jesus said, “I am the Light of the world. One who follows me will not be walking in the dark, but will have the Light which is life.” The Buddha’s teaching is said to have “brought light into darkness” so that people could see the truth for themselves. The Buddha also instructed his followers to “be a lamp unto yourself,” meaning that they should use the light of the mind to discover the truth. In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition it is said that our basic consciousness, the awareness behind our thoughts and emotions, has three inherent qualities—it is boundless, clear, and luminous or bright. This fundamental bright clarity means that the trained mind can cut, like