the way too hardBut nonviolence, above all, was the mission I felt I had been given by—for lack of a better word—god. In retrospect I can see that this savasana and precept practice was a lazy man’s zen, but nevertheless it comforted me and from it I do feel I received much benefit. Eventually, however, in the ninth year of this practice my discipline weakened—I don’t know why—until by the end my meditation was no more than my token assumption of the corpse pose and the mudra for only a few minutes and then even that, too, dwindled to nothing. Part of the decline was the influence of Krishnamurti, whose books I had come to love.
A third factor was that I had begun what is called power walking—the word “power” a misnomer in my case—for exercise but also as meditation. In the summer of 1985 I replaced my nightly savasana meditation with this daily exercise, a fast walk of five miles either on the sidewalks of my neighborhood or around the track of the local high school.
I had gotten fat.
As I walked I followed my breath and watched my step, trying to maintain balance and rhythm. Often I also introduced mantras as I walked. The word “peace” was the one I most often repeated in my head, turning it into a word of two syllables, the first on the inhalation, the second on the exhalation. Despite my intention, on some days I walked ten or twelve city blocks and had already worked up a sweat before I remembered the word “peace”; on other days it was the word in my mind my first step out my front door; but it was never long before my discursive thinking—usually on job, marriage, and family—would arise to displace it; and I might walk a mile or two before I would remember the word I had vowed and determined to maintain in my mind with my breath.
My commitment to this walking meditation was much more difficult than lying on my back and following my breath before sleep. Winter weather was a big obstacle and deterrent and—counting also my getting ready, my cooling down, and my cleaning up—my five-mile walk demanded two hours of my time every day. More than once I skipped this exercise for months, twice even for nine months, yet over the next twenty years my walking meditation was a regular part of my life.
I must praise it.
Walk.
Sometime in the mid-1990s I read books by Thich Nhat Hanh in which he recommended returning often to our breath and making what he called a half smile in our normal daily activity, and he recommended using common sounds and sights—red lights, green lights, bird calls, clouds, sirens, horns, scratches, bumps, blood, running water, thunder, lightning, rain, sunset, sunrise, insects, babies, sneezes, yawns—as reminders to do so.
This wonderful practice I immediately adopted and dozens of times each day, some days perhaps hundreds of times, I remembered my breath—as I had learned from Thich Nhat Hanh—and I would bring my attention to my inhalation and exhalation and smile what I imagined to be half.
It felt like a way of remembering life. It felt like a way of remembering death. It felt like a way of remembering life and death and to do no harm, to do good, to serve all beings, and to honor the precepts I still recited to myself every morning when I awoke.
My habit still was to look everyone with whom I spoke in the eye. To do so had always come natural to me and after the reinforcement that I’d received in 1972 from John I now did it without thinking. To many the practice is disconcerting, I was often reminded, just as it had at one time been to me.
“Why are you looking at me?” I was sometimes asked.
“I’m sorry!” I'd stammer and shrug. “I was just—looking.”
Though I suspect it was invisible to everyone but me myself, my experience in 1975 had changed me to the core. From age twelve to age thirty-two I wanted to be cool.
Now I wanted to be good.
Though I didn’t call it religion, I thought about what others call the religious life every day. Not a day went by that I didn’t think about it and about my effort to practice it. From 1975 until 1985 I often considered moving to The Farm in order to work with my friend John. Each time my wife and I would wrestle over money and jobs I revisited the possibility.
For eight years we were vegetarians.
We gave up vegetarianism only when our children insisted upon a diet like that of their friends. In my private heart of hearts in 1975 I had also taken a vow of poverty and I imagined myself—idealized myself—some day dying as I read Gandhi had, with no possessions other than my two changes of simple clothing, my eyeglasses, my sandals, and my cup and bowl. My wife and I rented an apartment and then a house and for eight years we lived from paycheck to paycheck.
But finally in 1985 my wife convinced me—thank god—that if only for the sake of our children and in the interest of common sense we had to buy a house. I agonized over what I considered a breach of my vow, it was indeed a bitter pill for me to swallow, but in the end I had to concede that my wife was right. Given our situation my principle—or the way I was trying to live it—didn’t make sense. For two years we had paid almost as much in rent each month as we would eventually pay to own our own home.
Throughout theological history we have been assured by religious leaders that if we perform certain rituals, repeat certain prayers or mantras, conform to certain patterns, suppress our desires, control our thoughts, sublimate our passions, limit our appetites and refrain from sexual indulgence, we shall, after sufficient torture of the mind and body, find something beyond this little life. And that is what millions of so-called religious people have done through the ages, either in isolation, going off into the desert or into the mountains or a cave or wandering from village to village with a begging bowl, or, in a group, joining a monastery, forcing their minds to conform to an established pattern. But a tortured mind, a broken mind, a mind which wants to escape from all turmoil, which has denied the outer world and been made dull through discipline and conformity—such a mind, however long it seeks, will find only according to its own distortion.Yet another part was my job. I had always been a dedicated educator. Now my daily classroom teaching, because it seemed to demand of me such vigilance, had begun to feel more and more like a religious practice.
A third factor was that I had begun what is called power walking—the word “power” a misnomer in my case—for exercise but also as meditation. In the summer of 1985 I replaced my nightly savasana meditation with this daily exercise, a fast walk of five miles either on the sidewalks of my neighborhood or around the track of the local high school.
I had gotten fat.
As I walked I followed my breath and watched my step, trying to maintain balance and rhythm. Often I also introduced mantras as I walked. The word “peace” was the one I most often repeated in my head, turning it into a word of two syllables, the first on the inhalation, the second on the exhalation. Despite my intention, on some days I walked ten or twelve city blocks and had already worked up a sweat before I remembered the word “peace”; on other days it was the word in my mind my first step out my front door; but it was never long before my discursive thinking—usually on job, marriage, and family—would arise to displace it; and I might walk a mile or two before I would remember the word I had vowed and determined to maintain in my mind with my breath.
My commitment to this walking meditation was much more difficult than lying on my back and following my breath before sleep. Winter weather was a big obstacle and deterrent and—counting also my getting ready, my cooling down, and my cleaning up—my five-mile walk demanded two hours of my time every day. More than once I skipped this exercise for months, twice even for nine months, yet over the next twenty years my walking meditation was a regular part of my life.
I must praise it.
Walk.
Sometime in the mid-1990s I read books by Thich Nhat Hanh in which he recommended returning often to our breath and making what he called a half smile in our normal daily activity, and he recommended using common sounds and sights—red lights, green lights, bird calls, clouds, sirens, horns, scratches, bumps, blood, running water, thunder, lightning, rain, sunset, sunrise, insects, babies, sneezes, yawns—as reminders to do so.
This wonderful practice I immediately adopted and dozens of times each day, some days perhaps hundreds of times, I remembered my breath—as I had learned from Thich Nhat Hanh—and I would bring my attention to my inhalation and exhalation and smile what I imagined to be half.
It felt like a way of remembering life. It felt like a way of remembering death. It felt like a way of remembering life and death and to do no harm, to do good, to serve all beings, and to honor the precepts I still recited to myself every morning when I awoke.
My habit still was to look everyone with whom I spoke in the eye. To do so had always come natural to me and after the reinforcement that I’d received in 1972 from John I now did it without thinking. To many the practice is disconcerting, I was often reminded, just as it had at one time been to me.
“Why are you looking at me?” I was sometimes asked.
“I’m sorry!” I'd stammer and shrug. “I was just—looking.”
Though I suspect it was invisible to everyone but me myself, my experience in 1975 had changed me to the core. From age twelve to age thirty-two I wanted to be cool.
Now I wanted to be good.
Though I didn’t call it religion, I thought about what others call the religious life every day. Not a day went by that I didn’t think about it and about my effort to practice it. From 1975 until 1985 I often considered moving to The Farm in order to work with my friend John. Each time my wife and I would wrestle over money and jobs I revisited the possibility.
For eight years we were vegetarians.
We gave up vegetarianism only when our children insisted upon a diet like that of their friends. In my private heart of hearts in 1975 I had also taken a vow of poverty and I imagined myself—idealized myself—some day dying as I read Gandhi had, with no possessions other than my two changes of simple clothing, my eyeglasses, my sandals, and my cup and bowl. My wife and I rented an apartment and then a house and for eight years we lived from paycheck to paycheck.
But finally in 1985 my wife convinced me—thank god—that if only for the sake of our children and in the interest of common sense we had to buy a house. I agonized over what I considered a breach of my vow, it was indeed a bitter pill for me to swallow, but in the end I had to concede that my wife was right. Given our situation my principle—or the way I was trying to live it—didn’t make sense. For two years we had paid almost as much in rent each month as we would eventually pay to own our own home.
Miniver scorned the gold he sought,I’d never felt so low.
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.
