It is very difficult to get a grip on this meditation thing. On one occasion it will go well and the next three or four badly. I am more and more becoming convinced that it is not just an activity among other activities, one in which you can engage and then go on to do other, very different, things. For many it is just that and I do not think it can then become anything more than a simple relaxed unwinding. Nor is it something that pervades the day, in that the morning and evening meditation produce a calming, less stressed attitude to daily events. It is not even that. It needs to go much, much deeper. It is not just a question of the effects of the morning’s mindfulness and focused awareness pervading the day, having an influence. Mindfulness itself must persist; that detached awareness and control need to apply to everything one does. I know I have read this before but the truth of it has only just struck me. It struck me yesterday afternoon walking along the field at the back. It was a glorious day, bright sun, blue sky and the singing of skylarks. Everything had such clarity and beauty – it was as though I was seeing it all for the first time. I felt as though I could stand there for hours, drinking it all in. I thought – it is easy to be mindful here, but after a while the startling clarity and newness will fade. It will become ordinary and then commonplace. My mind will look for distraction. I will want to be entertained, interested, aroused, engaged – anything to get out of this unchanging attitude. And I did just that. I came back and picked up a science fiction book and read for an hour, in spite of the little voice which kept nagging – No. No. You’ve got to stick with it.
Later
Mindfulness is more than just being aware of what you are doing. It is being rooted. In meditation being aware is the easy part, but this only really becomes mindfulness when it connects. There is awareness of breathing; awareness of the mind skittering about and being brought back to concentration on the breathing again; awareness of the body, the stomach rising and falling, of an itch, of external noises. All these constitute awareness but it is a shallow awareness, just of the surface of things, of transient phenomena. It is possible throughout the day, more or less, to be aware like this, to cultivate the semi-detached stance of an observer at a little distance from oneself. But, just as yesterday, it palls. And there is always the centripetal force of the body drawing the mind into subjective immersion in feelings, moods and sensations. All this is the awareness of the individual apart, of an entity among other others. It is not awareness of the depths.
Being aware is like looking at the surface of the sea, seeing the dancing reflections of the sun, the rolling waves, the gulls, boats, people swimming. Then you put on polarised sunglasses and the reflections and glitter of the surface vanish and you can see into the depths, into the deep down shadows and the shallow shades of green. Mindfulness is being aware of the depths of being and the interconnectedness of all things. The problem is how to acquire and how to wear throughout the day those ‘polarised glasses’.