Choose a comfortable seated posture,
Either in a chair,
Sitting on the floor,
Or seated on a cushion.
Sense into the support of the surface you've chosen for this practice,
Bringing attention to the sensation of contact of your body as it meets this surface.
Feel your body balanced over your hips and relax the shoulders down the back of the body.
Hands are resting on your lap or on your knees.
Notice the top of your head lifting up towards the ceiling or the sky.
And when you are ready,
Allowing your eyes to close,
Bringing awareness to your breath and the physical sensation of breathing.
Feel the breath as it flows in and out of the body,
Allowing the breath to be just as it is without trying to change or regulate it in any way.
Allow the breath to flow easily and naturally with its own rhythm and pace.
Take a moment and sense into your body,
Feeling your feet,
Legs,
Hips,
Lower and upper body,
Shoulders,
Arms,
Neck,
And your head.
As you settle into this posture,
Allow the body to be still with a sense of dignity,
A sense of resolve,
A sense of being complete and whole in this very moment.
And now bring to mind an image of a mountain,
Maybe one that you've seen or visited in person,
Or maybe one you've seen in a book or a movie,
Or just simply one that you imagine.
And allow this image to gradually come into focus.
And even if it doesn't come as a visual image,
Allowing the sense of this mountain and noting the mountain's overall shape,
Its lofty peak or peaks high in the sky,
The large base rooted in the Earth's crust,
Noting its steep or gentle sloping sides.
Note how massive the mountain is,
How solid and unmoving,
Whether from afar or up close,
Perhaps your mountain has snow blanketing its tops,
Trees reaching down to the base or rugged granite sides.
There may be streams and waterfalls cascading down the slopes.
Or maybe there's one peak or a series of peaks or with meadows and high lakes.
As you sit here,
Observe the qualities of the mountain.
The mountain is solid and unmoving,
And see if it's possible to sense these same qualities within your own body as you sit here.
You may even want to imagine your body as the mountain.
As you sit here in this grounded posture,
Your head might resemble the lofty peaks supported by the rest of the body,
Your shoulders and arms the sides of the mountain,
Your buttocks and legs the solid base rooted to your cushion or your chair.
Sensing in your body a sense of uplift within the pelvis and the spine.
Within each breath,
Embodying the qualities of the mountain,
Alive and yet unwavering in your inner stillness,
A centered,
Grounded,
Unmoving presence.
As you sit here,
Becoming aware of the fact that as the sun travels across the sky,
The light and shadows are changing moment by moment as the mountain sits in stillness.
Seeing and feeling how night follows day and day follows night.
The bright warm sun followed by the cool night sky decorated with stars.
The mountain just sits.
Through it all,
The mountain is experiencing change in each moment.
And yet the mountain just sits being itself.
It remains still as the seasons flow one into another and as the weather changes moment by moment and day by day.
The mountain is solid,
Calm and unmoving.
In the winter,
The mountain may be covered by a soft blanket of snow.
There may be extreme weather patterns with wind,
Ice and snow.
Through it all,
The mountain sits.
In the spring,
The snow begins to melt and the streams begin to overflow with waters of melting snow.
Trees begin to bud.
Flowers begin to bloom.
In summer,
The mountain may be busy with visitors,
People playing and hiking under a warm sun.
And yet the mountain just sits.
In the fall,
We are reminded of letting go,
Leaves changing color and dropping to the ground.
In any season,
It may find itself at times enshrouded in clouds or fog or pelted by freezing rain.
People may come 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 or rainy or foggy or dark.
None of this matters to the mountain,
Which remains at all times its essential self.
Clouds may come and clouds may go.
Tourists may like it or not.
The mountain's magnificence is not changed one bit by whether people see it or not.
Seen or unseen,
In sun or clouds,
Broiling or frigid,
Day or night.
It just sits,
Being itself.
In the same way as we sit in meditation,
We can learn to experience the mountain.
We can embody the same central,
Unwavering stillness and groundedness in the face of everything that changes in our lives,
Over seconds,
Hours,
Over years.
In our lives and in our meditation practice,
We experience the constantly changing nature of the mind and the body and of the outer world.
We have our own periods of light and darkness,
Activity and inactivity,
Our moments of color and our moments of drabness.
It's true that we experience storms of varying intensity and violence in the outer world and in our own minds and bodies.
Buffeted by high winds,
By cold and rain,
We endure periods of darkness and pain,
As well as moments of joy and uplift.
Even our appearance changes constantly,
Experiencing a weather of its own.
It may help us to see that our thoughts and feelings,
Our preoccupations,
Our emotional storms and crises,
Even the things that happen to us are very much like the weather on the mountain.
We tend to take it personally,
But its strongest characteristics are impersonal.
The weather of our own lives is not being ignored or denied.
It is to be encountered,
Honored,
Felt and known for what it is,
Held within awareness.
And in holding it this way,
We come to know a deeper silence and stillness.
We come to know wisdom.
By embodying the qualities of the mountain in our own meditation practice,
We can link up with its strength and stability and adopt them for our own.
We can learn to meet each moment with mindfulness,
Peace and clarity.
For the last few moments of this practice,
Connecting with the image of the mountain that you have chosen for this practice,
Paying attention to the stillness of the body and sitting with a sense of dignity,
A sense of resolve,
A sense of being complete and whole in this very moment.
