CHAPTER 1
NATURAL MEDITATIONTHE POWER OF NOWNESSThis morning, I went for a walk in the gentle rain. Mist partially hid everything--trees, pond, and houses--in a soft cloud, reminiscent of dreams. There was absolutely nowhere else I could have preferred to be. This is the place! I felt like the right person in the right place at the right time, the right moment. Suddenly I realized: It is now, or never--as always. For an incandescent, transparent moment, I was totally awake, attuned, fully present. Heart warm, eyes bright, senses wide awake, and breathing freely. I have rarely felt more alive. Eventually, after becoming soaking wet, I returned to my cabin, changed clothes, and sat on the porch rocking chair, blissfully feeling as I'd retired to the blessed Buddha fields--just hearing the rain and listening to its pattering on the foliage melodiously washing everything away while savoring the indescribable feeling of just being. It was a spontaneous, natural meditation. I could not have fabricated it myself.
Natural meditation means fully inhabiting the present moment. Meditation is finding yourself in that natural state of wakeful pure presence or lucid contemplation where you discover your authentic condition, and where everything is part of meditative awareness. This is the essence of nowness, beyond past and future, and even a little outside or beyond the present. In Tibetan we call it the fourth time, the transcendent, timeless moment of nowness, the atemporal eternal instant--the essence of beingness. We are naturally present and accounted for, although we so often overlook that fact. Like sleepwalkers, we stumble through life, wondering why there are stumbling blocks in our path and who put them there, why we keep stubbing our toes and having other so-called accidents. Mindfulness and awareness practice help us wake up, smell the roses, see through everything, remain calm and clear, and be free. When I teach natural meditation through a brief guided process, it involves three simple things: natural body, natural breath/energy, and natural mind. We can learn to rely on these three inner meditator's jewels. We learn to breathe and smile inwardly, to center and relax, and to focus while letting go into letting be. Furthermore, as we develop these practices just slightly further, we learn to settle, intensify, and then release into allowing--the three phases of basic meditation practice.
First, we have to let ourselves arrive, relax, and just settle down. Relaxing, stilling and settling the body, is the first step. Natural body is Buddha's body, nirmanakaya, perfect embodiment, just sitting. Second is breathing naturally, and just letting the energy go, come, and go in natural flow. Natural breath and energy is Buddha's breath, sambhogakaya--pure energy, just breathing. The third step is just being. Natural heart and mind is Buddha's mind, Dharmakaya, ultimate reality--just being, and aware of it: aware of physical sensations in the body; aware of emotional feelings and energetic movements; and aware of whatever momentarily bubbles up and presents itself in the mind or field of consciousness. This is the sole focus of natural meditation; present awareness, alert presence of mind--attentive _moment-to-moment mindfulness, rather than mindlessness and distraction. Nothing more need be done. As we learn to relax more and more into the simplicity and depth of this natural awareness, letting things come and go as they will in the panoramic, transparent expanse of total awareness, we become free of clinging and grasping, reacting to and against whatever arises, and simply appreciate the sublime view of things just as they are. There is nothing more to do than remain in this view: enjoy the view, open and inclusive, nonjudgmental, appreciating the majestic, expansive totality as it is. There is nirvanic peace in things left just as they are. This is natural meditation, homegrown natural Buddha.
The essence of meditation is the intentional use of attention in the present moment, the heart-mind transparent to itself. One of the best natural ways for most of us to painlessly effect this change in consciousness is by connecting with nature. I myself love to sit by any body of water, alongside the ocean waves, a river or waterfall, or even a swimming pool. I love looking out my window over the still, placid face of the lake near my house, in which I see reflected--or perhaps sense intuitively--the fact that everything is at peace and perfectly in place. I like losing my solid sense of time and place and personhood in the gently coursing ripples. My favorite place is near the ocean, where I can just listen to the waves and let them meditate me, washing everything out of my mind while the ocean itself just breathes in and breathes out--long, deep, rhythmically--relaxing and freeing me of all mental preoccupations and physical tension. To try to meditate and concentrate by the ocean seems like extra busywork; why not simply let the waves spontaneously meditate you? This is the essence of natural meditation, when it just happens. Knowing how to place oneself in the right time and place helps. I am totally at ease and at home as self-appointed Surveyor of Waves.
Sitting before a blazing hearth is also helpful for this purpose. We might think, "This natural meditation is not for me," or "I don't know how to do this, it's too unstructured," or "I need further instruction." Further instruction can certainly be given, and we will feed that habit, for now. However, further instruction in the direct-access Dzogchen style is to point out what we already know. For instance, who doesn't remember as a child lying outside in the grass looking at the sky--not falling asleep, as we would do now--but just innocently lying out in the grass, looking at the clouds, seeing the faces in the clouds, and gradually forgetting ourselves, becoming the grass and the earth, dissolving yet remaining awake and in subtle delight, naturally part of and one with all of life. At that point in our young lives, we certainly had never heard the words contemplative skygazing or Dzogchen meditation, but this is genuine natural meditation. So right here is the delicious principle: we already know how to do this. Dropping our body, relaxing totally, just being there without falling asleep. Not even thinking we're doing something special, getting enlightened, or accumulating spiritual merits and good karma out of it. It's not homework that we're supposed to do. It's not church or synagogue we are obliged to go to on the weekend or schoolroom classes we have to attend during the week; and yet, for some strange and inexplicable reason, we find ourselves just doing it. Lying there like the grass itself, absorbed in this timeless, primordial, natural meditation, we find ourSelves. It is part of us, part of our natural spirituality. This is natural meditation, spontaneous meditation. Who doesn't know how to do it?
I wouldn't want to overidealize this by saying, "It's part of the natural spirituality of children. Aren't they cute, blessed, fantastic!" Of course they are, sometimes--often, even; but more important, this natural ease and relaxation is an inherent part of our natural spirituality. That untrammeled, childlike, innately pure and complete little Buddha or inner spiritual child is still in us, in all of us, underneath it all, regardless of and deep beneath our personas, our defense mechanisms, self-concepts, beliefs, and hang-ups. So of course we already know how to do this natural meditation. Maybe we could find ourselves in that way on a lawn chair or a beach chair in our yard, or on our tenement's fire escape, or at the beach or swimming pool, lying in the sun like a lizard while the kids are swimming or playing. We don't even have to make a big deal about it. No, we don't have to cross our legs and look like a freakish Buddha statue sitting cross-legged at the public swimming pool. But we could be doing this natural meditation; it might even come to us if we let it. Yes, you can wear sunglasses. You can wear a hat, sunscreen. Yes, it will still work for you, if it does--if it fits for you, this natural meditation. Try it and see. Posture doesn't matter much; it's all about present awareness.
Perfectly suited natural meditation is like your own personal mantra, like your own breath, your own inner tide or heartbeat. It could take the supportive form of the sound of the ocean's waves just washing everything away, or lovely music, or whatever moves and transports you beyond your habitual consciousness and out of your ordinary, dualistic, self-referential and preoccupied, reactive state of mind. We could hear wind as music, as mantra--mantra wind, breath mantra, all and everything as what we call in India shabda, sacred sound, celestial mantra. I'm sure we all experience that at some time or another. Connecting with beauty is and can be a transformative natural meditation--seeing a flower, a painting, a gorgeous sunset, sitting in our fragrant garden at night, or some other natural outdoor scene that so moves and transports us that we unexpectedly experience a sharp intake of sudden pleasure, and we are no longer pedestrian, but uplifted on wings of delight, and all else temporarily falls away. Nature often does that to me. However, I don't want to overemphasize the nature part of natural meditation, because it doesn't have to be something outdoorsy in nature per se. Everything in the world is a part of nature, actually, including the skyscrapers and bridges. Who doesn't feel a sharp intake of breath when you see an infinite number of lights spread out twinkling below as you come over a city in an airplane at night, perhaps for the first time, or when driving over a rise and spotting the gorgeous span of the Golden Gate Bridge or some other _human-_made wonder? It is all radiant--God's creation, to talk in English. Beauty is another way that transports us beyond our finite egoic self to another, more transpersonal kind of love and oneness, an inexpressible otherworldly dimension ...
