PRACTICES FOR FALLING IN LOVE WITH THE EARTH
WE CAN BEGIN FALLING in love with the Earth right now. It doesn’t take a lot of preparation. Each time we practice mindfulness as we go about our day, our practice gets deeper and we’re able to generate more love and compassion, which in turn leads to greater understanding and insight.
Mindfulness is the continuous practice of touching deeply every moment of daily life. To be mindful is to be truly present with your body and your mind, to bring harmony to your intentions and actions, and to be in harmony with those around you.
We don’t need to make a separate time for this outside of our daily activities. We can practice mindfulness in every moment of the day, in the kitchen, the toilet, in our bedroom, and as we’re going from one place to another. We can carry mindfulness with us as we wash the dishes, take a morning shower, or drive the car.
We can do the same things we always do—walking, sitting, working, eating, and so on—with mindful awareness of what we’re doing. When we’re eating, we know that we’re eating. When we open a door, we know that we’re opening a door. Our mind is with our actions.
Our breathing is a stable solid ground that we can take refuge in. No matter what is going on inside us—thoughts, emotions, or perceptions—our breathing is always with us, like a faithful friend. Whenever we’re carried away by our thinking, when we’re overwhelmed by strong emotions, or when our minds are restless and dispersed, we can return to our breathing. We bring our body and mind together and we collect, calm, and anchor our mind.
We’re aware of the air coming in and going out of our body. With awareness of our breath, our breathing naturally becomes light, calm, and peaceful. At any time of the day or night, whether we’re walking, driving, working in the garden, or sitting at the computer, we can return to the peaceful refuge of our own breath. We may like to say silently,
Breathing in, I know I’m breathing in.
Breathing out, I know I’m breathing out.
To increase your mindfulness and concentration, you gently and easily follow your in-breath and out-breath all the way through. Just sitting and following your breathing can already bring a lot of joy and healing.
The best way to reunite with your body is through your breath. Awareness of your breathing brings your mind back to your body. Be with your body and remember that you have a body. Release any tension and bring calm to your body. This is the first step in restoring wellness. Bringing your mind home to your body, you become established in the here and the now, and you have a chance to live your life and experience each moment deeply. When you’re in touch with your body, you’re in touch with life, the cosmos, and planet Earth.
SITTING MEDITATION
Sitting here is like sitting under the Bodhi tree.
My body is mindfulness itself,
entirely free from distraction.
When you sit down, be aware that you are sitting on the Earth. Practice following your breathing in and out. Feel your spine tall, straight, and relaxed like a tree. Feel yourself rooted in the Earth and your body as the connection between sky and ground. Just notice your breath. Thoughts come and go like clouds. Don’t hold on to them or follow them, just let them pass by. Allow your body to completely relax. Don’t struggle. Allow your mind to settle.
We don’t do sitting meditation in order to become a Buddha or even to become enlightened. We sit to be happy. That’s all. We sit merely to be there. We sit to be aware that the wonderful world is right there inside us, above us, below us, and all around us. If we can sit like that, happiness becomes a reality.
We may sit for fifteen, thirty, or forty-five minutes. But even if we only sit for a few minutes we have to enjoy it and we have to profit from every single moment of sitting. How many people in the world have the chance to start their day so peacefully, sitting calmly and quietly in the early morning? We also have many opportunities throughout the day to sit mindfully, whether we’re at home, at school, at work, in the car, or on the train. Being peaceful and happy in our sitting, we can say,
Peace while sitting.
Joy while breathing.
Peace is the sitting.
Joy is the breathing.
This is an art.
DRINKING AND EATING MINDFULLY
Something as simple and ordinary as drinking a cup of tea can bring us great joy and help us feel our connection to the Earth. The way we drink our tea can transform our lives if we truly devote our attention to it.
Sometimes we hurry through our daily tasks, looking forward to the time when we can stop and have a cup of tea. But when we’re finally sitting with the cup in our hands, our mind is still running off into the future, and we can’t enjoy what we’re doing; we lose the pleasure of drinking our tea. We need to keep our awareness alive and value each moment of our daily life. We may think our other tasks are less pleasant than drinking tea. But if we do them with awareness, we may find that they’re actually very enjoyable.
Drinking a cup of tea is a pleasure we can give ourselves every day. To enjoy our tea, we have to be fully present and know clearly and deeply that we are drinking tea.
When you lift your cup, you may like to breathe in and become truly present. When you are fully established in the present moment, you are free from the past and the future, from your thoughts, worries, and projects. In that state of freedom, you drink your tea. There is happiness, peace, and a feeling of connection with all of life. Looking deeply into your tea, you see that you are drinking fragrant plants that are the gift of Mother Earth. You see the labor of the tea pickers; you see the luscious tea fields and plantations in Sri Lanka, China, and Vietnam. You know that you are drinking a cloud; you are drinking the rain. The tea contains the whole universe.
Before eating, we may like to take a moment to reflect on our food. In the Five Contemplations we vow to eat in a way that preserves our compassion and reduces the suffering of living beings. Someone without compassion can’t be happy, because they’re cut off from others and can’t relate to the world. We need to have compassion, too, for the Earth, our mother. When we eat, we think about all the people, plants, animals, and minerals that have contributed to producing the food on our plate—the earthworms enriching the soil, the farmer working the land, the people who harvested the crops—but we also remember the many species that have already died and vanished from the Earth because of our ways of eating and consuming.
Before eating, we breathe together and look at the food, appreciating the people who prepared the meal and all the conditions that have brought this meal to us. We know that this food is the body of Mother Earth and the body of the whole cosmos. We vow to eat in a way that preserves our health and well-being and the health and well-being of our planet. Looking deeply like this, we become filled with gratitude, which we naturally want to express. We can do this by reciting the Five Contemplations.
THE FIVE CONTEMPLATIONS
1. This food is a gift of the Earth, the sky, the universe, numerous living beings, and much hard work.
2. May we eat with mindfulness and gratitude so as to be worthy to receive it.
3. May we transform our unwholesome mental formations, especially our greed, and learn to eat with moderation.
4. May we keep our compassion alive by eating in such a way that we reduce the suffering of living beings, preserve our planet, and reverse the process of global warming.
5. We accept this food so we can nurture our brotherhood and sisterhood, strengthen our Sangha, and nourish our ideal of serving all living beings.
When we do walking meditation, we can take each step in gratitude and joy because we know that we’re walking on Mother Earth. We can walk with gentle steps, in reverence to the Earth who gave us birth and of whom we are a part. We are aware that the Earth we’re walking on is sacred. With every step we touch the Earth Bodhisattva, so each step should be loving and peaceful. We should be very respectful because we know we’re walking on our mother. If we walk like this, every step will be healing, every step will be nourishing. Walk with reverence. That is something we can train ourselves to do. Wherever we walk, in the railway station or the supermarket, we’re walking on Mother Earth, so wherever we are becomes a holy sanctuary.
Each step contains insight. Each step has happiness. Each step has love—love and compassion for the Earth and all beings as well as for ourselves. We can try slow walking. Breathe in and take one step, breathe out and take another step. Why do we walk like that? To be in touch with the great Earth, to be in touch with the world around us. When we’re in touch, when we’re fully aware of the wonder of walking on the Earth, each step nourishes and heals us. Thirty steps taken with this kind of insight are thirty opportunities to nourish and heal ourselves. So when you walk, invest one hundred percent of your being in your walking. Don’t pretend you’re walking mindfully when in reality you’re planning your grocery shopping or your next meeting. Walk with your whole body and mind. Don’t think. If you want to talk to others, you can stop in order to do so. We don’t want to speak on the phone or eat while we’re walking because we want to enjoy every step. We also want to be fully present for the person we’re speaking to or the food we’re eating. We can sit down somewhere to make our phone call in peace, to eat our food, or drink our juice in mindfulness. Every step has to have mindfulness. Every step must bring peace to our body and mind. Every step must bring about the insight of our connection to the Earth.
When we do walking meditation, we unite our body and our mind. We combine our breathing with our steps. Match your steps to your breath in a way that is comfortable for you. When you breathe in, you may take one, two, three, or four steps during that in-breath. And when you breathe out you may want to take a few more steps than you did with your in-breath.
For example, breathing in we take two steps, and breathing out we take three steps. If we take three steps while breathing in, then we may take four or five steps while breathing out. Find your own count that fits your natural breathing. Breathing in four steps, breathing out six. In five, out eight. When we can walk and breathe like that, without thinking, it’s very pleasant.
Walking meditation is a way of waking up to the wonderful moment we are living in. If our mind is caught, preoccupied with our worries and our suffering, or if we distract ourselves with other things while walking, we can’t practice mindfulness; we can’t enjoy the present moment. We’re missing out on life. But if we’re awake, then we’ll see this is a wonderful moment that life has given us, the only moment in which life is available. We can value each step we take, and each step can bring us happiness because we’re in touch with life, with the source of happiness, and with our beloved planet.