Be the Mountain Meditation based on a meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn.
So begin by sitting with a straight back,
Holding your head erect on your neck and shoulders.
Just allowing the shoulders to begin to fully relax,
Placing your hands on your knees.
If it's more comfortable you can lie down.
Just allowing your eyes to close or having a soft gaze about 45 degrees angle downwards.
Just allowing and bringing your attention to the flow of your breathing.
Feel each in-breath and each out-breath.
Just observing the breathing without trying to change it or regulate it in any way.
Just allowing the body to be still.
Just being with a sense of dignity,
A sense of resolve,
A sense of being complete and whole in this very moment.
And as you're here just picturing in your mind's eye as best as you can the most beautiful mountain that you know or have seen or can just imagine.
Just holding the image and feeling of this mountain,
Allowing it to gradually come into greater focus.
Observing its overall shape,
What it looks like,
Its lofty peaks,
Highs,
Up into the sky.
The large base of the mountain rooted into the rock of the earth's crust.
And the steep or gently sloping sides,
Just noticing how big it is,
How massive,
How solid,
How unmoving and how beautiful it looks from both afar and near.
Perhaps your mountain has snow at the top and trees on the lower slopes.
Perhaps it just has one prominent peak or maybe a series of peaks or maybe even a high plateau at the top.
Whatever it looks like to you,
Just sitting and breathing with the image of this mountain.
Observing it,
Noticing its qualities.
And when you feel ready,
Seeing if you can bring the mountain into your own body so that the body here and the stillness and the mountain in your mind's eye becomes one.
So that as you sit here,
You share in the massiveness,
The stillness and the majesty of the mountain.
You becoming the mountain rooted in the position you're in.
And you becoming the mountain rooted in the position you're in.
Your head perhaps becoming the lofty peak supported by the rest of your body.
Your shoulders and arms are the sides of the mountain.
Your buttocks and legs are the solid base rooted in the mountain.
Your buttocks and legs are the solid base rooted in the position you're in.
Just experiencing in your body a sense of uplift from deep within the pelvis and spine with each breath as you continue just sitting.
Becoming a little more a breathing mountain unwavering in your stillness.
Completely what you are beyond words and thought.
A centered,
Rooted,
Unmoving presence.
And as you sit here becoming aware of the fact that as the sun travels across the sky,
The light and shadows and colors are changing virtually moment by moment.
Night follows day and day follows night.
A canopy of stars,
The moon,
Then the sun.
And true it all the mountain just sits.
Experiencing change in each moment.
Constantly changing yet always just being itself.
It remains still as the seasons flow into one another and as the weather changes moment by moment and day by day.
A kindness,
A beating all change.
In summer,
There's no snow on the mountain except perhaps at the very peaks.
In fall,
The mountain may wear a coat of brilliant fire colors.
In winter,
A blanket of snow and ice.
In any of the seasons,
It may find itself at times enshrouded in clouds or fog or 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.
None of this matters to the mountain,
Which remains at all times its essential self.
Clouds may come and clouds may go,
But the mountain's magnificence and beauty are not changed one bit by the way people see it or not.
Or by the weather seen or unseen in sun or clouds.
Broiling or frigid,
Day or night,
It just sits being itself.
At times visited by violent storms,
Buffeted by snow and rain and winds of untinkable magnitude.
And true it all,
The mountain continues to sit unmoved by the weather,
By what happens on the surface,
By the world of appearances.
And 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 color 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.
We endure periods of darkness and pain as well as the moments of joy.
Even our appearance changes constantly,
Experience the weather of its own.
By becoming the mountain in our meditation practice,
We can link up with its strength and stability and adapt it for our own.
We can use its energies to support our energy to encounter each moment with mindfulness and equanimity and clarity.
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 all personally but its strongest characteristic is impersonal.
The weather of our own lives is not to be ignored or denied,
It's to be encountered,
Honored,
Felt,
Known for what it is and held in awareness.
And in holding it in this way we come to know a deeper silence,
A stillness,
A wisdom.
Mountains have this to teach us and much more if we can come to listen.
