The Mountain Meditation

During these challenging and uncertain times, it is understandable that you might feel fear and frustration. Insight Timer Teacher Dr. Darragh O'Shea offers this Mountain Meditation, designed to cultivate stillness and calm and to connect with our inner strength and stability in the face of internal and external challenges.

Transcript

The mountain meditation.

So coming to sit.

Allowing your eyes to close gently as you bring your attention to the sensations of breathing.

Beginning now by observing three breaths for their full duration.

Experiencing each in-breath and each out-breath.

Continuing your breathing without trying to change it or regulate it in any way.

Allowing the body to be as still as possible and sitting with a sense of dignity,

A sense of resolve,

A sense of being complete,

Whole in this very moment.

Nothing else to do nor else to be.

Simply sitting and know that you are sitting right now.

And as you sit here,

Picturing in your mind's eye as best you can the image of a mountain.

Perhaps the image comes easily to mind.

The mountain may be one that you know well from memory.

If not,

Taking your time and using your imagination and as best you can allowing the image of a mountain either real or fictional to form.

And now holding the image and feeling of this mountain in your mind's eye.

Observing the image and memory gradually come into greater focus.

Observing its shape,

The large base rooted in the rock of the earth's crust,

Its steep or gently sloping sides,

Its lofty peak high in the sky.

Noticing how impressive,

How solid,

How unmoving,

How beautiful the mountain is.

If you will,

Observing the mountain from different perspectives,

Up close,

Far away and from above.

Noticing that perhaps your mountain has snow at the top and trees along the lower slopes.

Perhaps it has one prominent peak or perhaps a series of peaks.

Observing it with a sense of detail,

Curiosity,

Noting its qualities and when you feel ready to seeing if you can bring the mountain into your own body.

So that as you sit here,

You and the mountain become one.

Embodying the mountain.

So that you share in the massiveness and the stillness and beauty of the mountain.

You and your body,

The mountain becoming one.

Rooted in the sitting posture,

Your head becomes the lofty peak,

Your shoulders and arms the sides of the mountain,

The slopes.

Your base,

Your buttocks and legs,

The solid base,

Rooted to your cushion or your chair.

Seeing in your body a sense of uplifts,

A sense of dignity from deep within your pelvis and spine.

As you continue sitting,

With each breath becoming a little more of a breathing mountain.

Unwavering in your stillness,

Completely what you are beyond words and thought,

You become more and more a complete whole,

Unmoving presence.

As you sit here,

Becoming aware of the fact that as the sun travels across the sky,

The light and shadows and colours are changing virtually moment by moment.

All the while,

The mountain remains still.

Sure enough,

Night follows day and day follows night.

Each day the sun gives way to the moon.

Through it all,

The mountain just sits.

Seeing change in each moment,

Constantly changing,

Yet always just being its essential self.

It remains still as the seasons flow into one another.

And as the weather changes moment by moment and day by day,

Calmness abiding all change.

In summer,

There is no snow on the mountain,

Except perhaps for the very peaks.

In the fall,

The mountain may dramatically change colours from beautiful green shades to fiery reds.

In winter,

A blanket of snow and ice may descend upon the mountain.

In any season,

It may find itself at times covered in clouds or fog,

Pelted by freezing rain.

People may come to see the mountain and comment on how beautiful it is or how it's not a good day to see the mountain that it's too cloudy,

Foggy or dark.

None of this matters to the mountain,

Which remains at all times its essential self.

Clouds may come and go.

Tourists may like it or not.

The mountain's beauty is not changed one bit by whether people see it or not.

Whether you're unseen in clouds or in sunshine day or night,

It just sits.

At times the mountain is visited by violent storms,

Snow and rain,

Winds of unspeakable force may batter the sides of the mountain.

Through it all,

The mountain sits.

Spring comes,

The birds sing in the trees once again.

Trees return,

Flowers boom in the high meadows and on the slopes.

Streams overflow with the waters of melting snow.

Through it all,

The mountain continues to sit and move by the weather and what happens on the surface.

And so in the same way,

As we sit in meditation,

We can learn to experience the mountain.

We can embody the same unwavering stillness and rootedness in the face of everything that changes in our own lives over seconds,

Over hours,

Over years.

In our lives and in our meditation practice,

We constantly experience the changing nature of mind and body and of the outer world.

We have our own periods of light and darkness,

Our moments of colour and our moments of drabness.

Certainly we experience storms of varying intensity and violence in the outer world and in our own minds and bodies.

High winds,

Cold rain.

We endure periods of darkness,

Sickness,

Ill health,

Pain,

Suffering,

As well as the moments of vitality,

Joy and uplift.

Even our appearance changes constantly,

Experiencing this sort of weather of its own.

By becoming the mountain in our meditation practice,

We can connect with its strength and stability and adopt these characteristics for our own.

We can use its energy to support our own energy and willingness to encounter each moment with mindfulness and equanimity.

It may help and inspire us to see that our thoughts and feelings,

Preoccupations,

Our emotional storms and crises,

Even the things that happen to us are very much like the weather on the mountain.

Understandably,

We tend to take it all personally,

But its strongest characteristic is impersonal.

The weather of our own lives is not to be ignored or denied or avoided.

It is to be encountered,

Acknowledged,

Felt,

Experienced,

Known for what it is and held in awareness and in holding it in this way.

Awareness and curiosity,

We come to know a deeper silence,

A deeper wisdom.

Mountains like much of nature have this to teach us and much more if we choose to listen.

So if you find you resonate in some way with the strength and stability of the mountain in this sitting,

It may be helpful for using it time to time in your meditation practice and as you go about your daily life as a reminder of what it is to sit mindfully with all that we experience.

So in the time that remains,

Continuing to sustain the mountain meditation on your own in silence moment by moment until you hear the sound of the bell.

물리음을ינו.

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Reviews

A wonderful meditation for sitting with life's "weather"

The best version of the mountain meditation I’ve found.

Amazing.

Very nice. Thanks for sharing this with us. Namaste

One of my favorites. Leaves me feeling solid and more securely rooted.

Thank you for this meaningful meditation.! 🌲 ⛰ 🙏🏽

Calming, the mountain visualization gives a feeling of strength and stability, unshakable.

Thank you- this is exactly what I needed this morning 🙏🏽🤍⛰

I love this meditation. Calming, quiet and spacious. Thank you!

I love this medication, I started with this meditation 444 days ago on my 59th birthday in Sedona. I felt very uneasy that day for some reason.
I told my husband I needed to take a two hour break from everything. I went downstairs and sat in front of a mountain and did this meditation.
It change the trajectory of my life that day. And every Day since.
I have been doing meditations on Insight Timer now every single day. This one is one of my favorites. Thank you insight timer. I have an amazing amount of gratitude for what you have given all of us globally. Forever gratefully 💜🙏🦋🎶🌈

Beautiful imagery about the unchangeable essence of the mountain 🙏🏼

So helpful Kennesaw Mountain is my sacred place. This brought me back there to core

A calming and inspiring meditation. Namaste

Beautiful and grounding

I loved this, the powerful & calming sense of the mountain - so strong, present, patient, knowing. Thank you for this beautiful meditation that is both grounding and inspiring! ⛰❣️🌟

A peaceful and calming meditation focusing on the mountains with it beautiful strength and stillness is a meditation I will revisit frequently as I am going through periods of uncertainty! Namaste💜🙏🐸

love the grounding and support of this meditation 🙏🏻❤️

Beautiful and serene.

Beautiful practice. Thank you ✨💛🙏🌈

Very soothing and peaceful. Thank you 🙏 I enjoyed this meditation and plan on listening to it many more times. 🌸