Try this inspired exercise in walking meditation, excerpted from David Schiller’s See Your Way to Mindfulness.
This one can be challenging, especially for anyone who lives in a city. The pace of life on the sidewalks is fast. It feels good. We’re often driven that way internally, too. Some of us even want our walks to count as training. Which is why “slow down” is a ubiquitous counter-mantra. But how slow? How about as slow as can be. Think of it as walking meditation, what Zen Buddhists call kinhin. Take a step, breathe, look. Study the bark on a tree. Examine something in a store window. Allow yourself to be completely distracted from the goal of reaching your destination. You’ll fight it, but if and when you’re able to let go of the tug to “hurry up,” you might just discover a new experience.
About the Book:
Seeing, really seeing, is like meditation. In a world filled with distraction, seeing mindfully is a way to pay attention, to hit pause and find calm by focusing on what’s directly in front of us. See Your Way to Mindfulness is a gift book of inspiration and instruction to help readers open their eyes—and their “I’s.” Written by David Schiller, author of the national bestseller The Little Zen Companion, it’s a collection of quotes, prompts, exercises, meditations—married with photographs and drawings that bring the words to life.
The quotes are from artists, Buddhists, philosophers, poets, and more, all centered on the theme of how “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes” (Marcel Proust). The short, playful exercises and prompts—like Seeing in the Rain, Eye Spy with My Open I, Spend 30 Minutes Taking a Five-Minute Walk, Get Lost—are designed to disrupt routine and inspire readers to see for themselves. Some of the exercises involve drawing, writing, and taking photographs, opening a path to creativity as well as showing how to engage in the moment.
Think of it as the Zen of seeing—a new way to look at the world afresh and rediscover joy in the everyday.
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