Yesterday we were in the Muir Woods. It's a 550 acre old-growth coastal redwood forest. The redwoods in it are mostly 500 to 800 years old. The oldest tree is about 1200 years old. When you walk in a forest of redwood trees, you cannot help but be humbled by the grandeur around you. This is nature unbridled. If you have to speak, your voice comes out in a whisper. You might notice at times your jaw is hanging open in wonder. Like standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon, the only appropriate response is hushed awe. And yet...
If you are not paying attention, if you are not present in your five senses, you may not even notice where you are. You may have conversations, at loud volume, about other people, about work and the troubles you're having there. You might be planning your dinner, or talking about how no one really understands you. In English, Spanish, German or Italian. So many people, so many words.
The woods are not terribly large, as woods go. Even on this day a week after Labor Day, they were filled with groups of people, and the only ones of them who were silent were the three individuals on their own and one couple, all at least 60 years old, walking slowly, savoring, enjoying. Quiet.
When our mind is so loud it drowns out everything else, and when we know ourselves as nothing other than our thoughts and our feelings, it doesn't matter really where we are. Because all we'll hear is ourself. All we'll know is what we already know. We won't learn anything because we're full already. And we will have to put it outside ourselves, we will have to speak our thoughts out loud in order to let off some of the pressure.
I understand. I once was asked to go for a walk--this was only about seven years ago--and I was stumped. It was January in Flagstaff, AZ. Snow. Cold. We'd been listening to lectures for about three hours. Let's go for a walk. What do you mean, I said. You know, said my friends. Let's take a walk. A walk? Where? I asked. Nowhere. Just a walk. Come on. And I said, but you're only going to come back here, right? Yes, they said, suddenly speaking as if they'd discovered that I was mentally challenged. Then what's the point? I asked, and I wasn't kidding at all. I was dead serious. Why would anyone even think of walking somewhere without there being a purpose for it, like buying a soda or getting gas for your car.
That was before the intervening years of meditation, the years of twice each day letting go of the stresses that keep us from even being able to imagine being present. When we are filled with the stresses of modern life, we can no more choose to be present on a regular basis than we can choose to fly. It's simply not possible. The stresses wrench us away from life, from nature, from how we are meant to live. We are pulled into the stories our mind makes up about these feelings that buzz through us, and we are overwhelmed by the feelings our mind amplifies with its stories.
The longer I have the practice of Vedic meditation, the more I see that life as I have come to experience it is not possible without this practice or something that works equally well. At the mercy of my stresses, I am self-focused, self-centered, small. Constrained. When I lived at the mercy of my stresses, all my energy was spent just trying to feel better and trying to keep my head above water. Whatever was going on around me, I must have missed at least 75% of it on a regular basis. I don't want to miss any more of what's available. I want to know myself as a part of this thing. I want to be present to the wonder of nature. Which is always there, always available to us, whether at Hollywood and Vine or in the Muir Woods.
With our meditation, we establish ourselves in Being, and then are able, to an ever-expanding degree, to experience our oneness with nature. With the woods, the trees, the air, the sea, the sky. Even with the Italian bikers discussing their dinner plans.
Today I will try to listen to something other than the inside of my head. I will not speak unless I have something to say. I will try to feel nature around me. And I will laugh when I find myself incapable of perfectly doing any of it.
Muir Woods, Marin County, CA
