Being the Mountain

Find your strength, find your peace, stand still and tall with the mountain and notice the weather to change around your presence.

Transcript

Welcome to the mountain meditation.

This meditation is best done in a sitting position,

Either on the floor or in a chair.

And it begins by sensing into the support you have from the chair or the cushion that you're on,

Paying special attention to the actual sensations of contact.

Finding a position of stability and poise,

Upper body balanced over your hips and shoulders in a comfortable but alert posture,

Hands resting gently in your lap or on your knees,

Arms hanging by their own weight like heavy curtains,

Stable and relaxed.

Actually sensing into your body,

Feeling your feet,

Your legs,

Your hips,

Lower and upper body,

Arms,

Shoulders,

Your neck and head.

And when you are absolutely ready,

Allowing your eyes to close,

Bringing awareness to your breath,

The actual physical sensations,

Feeling each breath as it comes in and goes out,

Letting the breath be just as it is without trying to change or regulate it in any way.

Allowing it to flow easily and naturally with its own rhythm and pace,

Knowing that you are breathing perfectly well right now.

There is nothing for you to do.

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

A sense of resolve,

A sense of being complete and whole in this very moment,

With your posture reflecting this sense of wholeness.

As you sit here letting an image form in your mind's eye of the most magnificent or beautiful mountain you know or have seen or can even imagine,

Letting it gradually come into greater focus and even if it doesn't come as a visual image,

Allowing the sense of this mountain and feeling its overall shape,

Its lofty peak or peaks reaching high into the sky,

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

Its steep or gently sloping sides noticing how massive it is,

How solid,

How unmoving,

And how beautiful,

Whether from afar or up close.

Perhaps your mountain has snow blanketing its top and trees reaching down to the base or rugged granite sides with steep drop-offs.

There may be streams and waterfalls cascading down the slopes of your mountain.

There may be one peak or a series of peaks or with meadows and high mountain lakes.

Just observing it,

Noting its qualities,

And when you feel absolutely ready,

Seeing if you can bring the mountain into your own body,

Sitting here so that your body and the mountain in your mind's eye become one,

So that as you sit here you share in the massiveness and the stillness and the majesty of the mountain.

You become the mountain.

Grounded in the sitting posture,

Your head becomes the lofty peak,

Supported by the rest of the body and affording a panoramic view.

Your shoulders and arms,

The sides of a mountain,

Your buttocks and legs,

The solid base rooted to your cushion or your chair,

Experiencing in your body a sense of uplift from deep within your pelvis and spine,

With each breath as you continue sitting,

Becoming a little bit more a breathing mountain alive and vital,

Yet unwavering in your inner stillness,

Completely what you are beyond words and thought,

A centered,

Grounded and unmoving presence.

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 every moment by moment in the mountain's stillness and the surface teems with life and activity,

Streams,

Melting snow,

Waterfalls,

Plants,

Wildlife,

As the mountain sits,

Seeing and feeling how night follows day and day follows night,

The bright warming sun followed by the cool night sky studded with stars and the gradual dawning of a new day.

Through 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 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 or in the crags shielded from direct sunlight.

In the fall the mountain may wear a coat of brilliant fire colors.

In winter a blanket of snow and ice.

In any season it may find itself at times enthralled 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,

That it's too cloudy or rainy or foggy or dark.

But 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 and beauty are not changed one bit by weather,

People see it or people don't.

Something 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 unthinkable magnitude.

And through it all the mountain sits.

Spring comes,

Trees leaf out,

Flowers bloom in the high meadows,

Birds sing in the trees once again,

Streams overflow with the waters of melting snow and through it all the mountain continues to sit,

Unmoved by the weather,

By what happens on its surface,

By the world of appearances,

Remaining its essential self through the seasons,

The changing weather,

The activity ebbing and flowing on its surface.

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 own lives.

Over seconds,

Over hours,

Over years,

In our lives and in our meditation practice,

We experience constantly the changing nature of mind and 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 the moments of joy and uplift.

Even our appearance changes constantly,

Experience a weather of its own.

By becoming a mountain in our meditation practice,

We can connect with its strength and stability and adopt 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 our feelings,

Our preoccupations,

Our emotional storms and our crises,

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

You see,

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 is 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 and stillness and wisdom.

Mountains have this to teach us and much more if we can let it in.

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

It may be helpful to use it from time to time in your meditation practice to remind you of what it means to sit mindfully with resolve and with wakefulness in true stillness.

So now,

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 bells.

Reviews

Beautiful. Elsy

Very grounding and so much to contemplate. This is just what I needed to get moving. Thank you.

Lovely, calming and very visual 😊

Very stabilizing.

This is exactly what I need at this time in my life. I will use it every morning for the foreseeable future. Thank you!

Wonderful meditation, bringing back to consciousness my ten day silent retreat in a monastery hermitage with an unobstructed view of Mt. Sopris in Colorado. Often my sits would face this beautiful mountain, and the metaphor of the silent mountain and the weather passing deeply resonate. I use a photo of the mountain from my hermitage window as my screen shot in this app. Thank you, this is my newest bookmarked vestibule to a longer, silent sit.

Well done, AMAZING thank you so much Matthew ♡♡♡♡♡

Thank you Matthew. This guided meditation is very powerful and very helpful. I am grateful.

The analogy of the mountain and our lives was very cool

Fantastic. I will use this frequently.

Thank you. Beautiful connection with nature and self. I would have liked more time before the last bell 🙏

Awesome...very empowering. I wish the final bell waited a little longer.

I like the message in this mediation. As one other reviewer said, the voice is a little intense, but it didn't bother me.

Very nice. Thank you🙂

A flood of images and a wave if calm

It is so strong, I think I will practice it several times, thank you so much!

I finally understand and can embody mountain meditation. Thank you, Matthew.

Very powerful. I held every word close to me. When it was time for quiet reflection I could have stayed longer. Will visit this meditation frequently.