Mountain Meditation

One of my favourite meditations is "The Mountain Meditation" by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It encourages us to seek inner stability, equanimity, and peace, even in the face of unpredictable and constant change and chaos. Get ready to embody the mountainlike unwavering stillness, dignity, and groundedness.

Here is an adaptation of Kabat-Zinn's classic guided meditation.

Music: Healing Water - By David Renda

Image: Photo by David Kovalenko on Unsplash

Transcript

So today we do a different meditation which is called Mountain Meditation.

It's a very popular mindfulness meditation.

So in this meditation we normally sit down,

Either on the floor or on a chair,

Whatever is comfortable to you,

And then begin the sensing into the support that you have.

It's from the chair or the cushion,

And then paying attention to actual sensation of the contact.

So allowing your eyes to close,

Sit normally,

Naturally,

Upright,

And finding a position of stability and voice.

Your upper body is balanced over hips and shoulders,

Are in a comfortable but alert posture,

Hands on your lap,

On your knees,

And arms hanging by their own weight like heavy curtains,

Stable,

Relaxed,

Actually sensing into your body.

Feeling your feet,

Legs,

Hips,

Lower and upper body,

Arms,

Shoulders,

Neck,

Head.

When you're ready,

Allowing your eyes to close,

If they're not closed already,

And bringing the awareness to breath.

The actual sensation of the breath,

Feeling each breath as it comes in and goes out,

And letting the breath be just as it is.

Without trying to change or regulate it in any way,

Allowing it to flow easily,

Naturally,

With its own rhythm and pace.

And know that you're breathing perfectly well right now,

Nothing for you to do,

And just resting in this,

Resting with wakefulness,

And allowing the body to be still,

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

A sense of resolve,

A sense of being complete,

Whole,

In this very moment.

With your posture reflecting this sense of wholeness.

So,

Holding on to this sense of wholeness,

A sense of being complete,

In this very moment,

Sitting with a sense of dignity,

A sense of resolve,

Very still,

Contained.

And as you sit here,

Letting an image form,

Image in your mind's eyes,

Image of the most magnificent or the beautiful mountain you know or have seen,

What can imagine.

Letting it gradually come into your greater focus.

And even if it doesn't come as a visual image,

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

Its lofty peak,

Or it may have many peaks high in the sky,

This mountain in your mind has the large bays rooted in the bedrock of the earth's crust,

Its steep,

Or maybe gently sloping,

Noticing how massive it is,

How solid it is,

How unmoving it is,

And how beautiful.

Doesn't matter if you see it from far or up close,

This mountain is massive,

Solid,

Unmoving and beautiful.

So allowing this image to form in your mind.

Now maybe your mountain has snow blanketing on its top and trees reaching down to the bays.

It may have rugged granite sides,

Or there may be streams and waterfalls cascading down.

There may be one peak,

A series of peaks.

It could even have meadows and high lakes.

So observing it,

Noting its quality,

And when you feel ready,

Seeing if you can bring this mountain into your own body sitting here,

So that your body and the mountain in your mind's eyes become one.

So that as you sit here,

You're sharing the messiness and the stillness in the majesty of this mountain,

And you become the mountain.

This mountain is massive,

Still majestic.

So grounded in his sitting posture,

Your head becomes the lofty peak,

Supported by the rest of the body,

And affording a panoramic view.

The shoulders and arms are the sides of the mountain.

And the bays and lakes form the solid bays rooted in your cushion or in your chair,

Thus experiencing in your whole body a sense of uplift from deep within,

Deep within your pelvis and spine.

And with each breath,

As you continue sitting becoming a little more breathing mountain,

Alive,

Vital.

Continue this with each breath.

Continue to be the unwavering in your inner stillness.

Beyond the words and thoughts you can capture,

Continue to become 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 and colors are changing virtually moment by moment in the mountain's stillness and the surface that is teeming with life and activity,

Streams and melting snow,

Water flow,

Plants and wildlife.

And as the mountain sits and seeing and feeling how night follows the day and day follows the night,

The bright,

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

And with all,

All of this day,

Night and moments and shapes,

Mountain just sits,

Experiencing change in each moment and 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,

Day by day.

And as the calmness abides all these changes,

And mountain just sits,

Experiencing all these changes.

In summer,

There may be no snow on the mountain,

Except maybe in the very top of its peaks.

Or the mountain may wear a coat of brilliant fire colors,

And in winter,

Maybe it has a very thick blanket of snow and ice.

In any season,

It may find itself at times and shouted in clouds or forks or pelted by freezing rain.

People may come to see the mountain and comment on how beautiful it is,

Or how it is not a good day to see the mountain today.

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

But none of this matters to the mountain.

The mountain remains at all times its essence itself.

Clouds may come,

Clouds may go,

Tourists may like it,

You may not like it.

The mountain's magnificence and the beauty are not changed one bit.

But whether people see it or not see it,

Whether the mountain is seen or not seen,

Whether the mountain is in sun or in clouds or it's boiling or it's frigid or it's day or it's night,

It just sits by itself.

The mountain just remains at all times its essence itself.

It just sits being itself,

Full of resolve,

Full of groundedness.

At times it's even visited by the most violent storms,

And snow and rain and wind of unthinkable magnitude.

Through it all,

The mountain sits.

The spring comes,

Trees live out,

Flowers bloom,

And in the high meadow and slopes birds sing and trees are beaming with their life again.

Streams overflow with the water,

And through it all,

The mountain continues to sit,

Unmoved by the weather,

By what happens on its surface,

By the world of appearances.

The mountain continues to remain its essence itself and through the seasons,

The changing weather,

The activities,

All of these are just on the surface.

Through it all,

The mountain sits.

In the same way as we sit in this meditation,

We can learn to experience the mountain.

We can embody the same central,

Unwavering stillness and groundedness in the face of everything,

Everything that changes in our life.

These changes could be over seconds or over hours or over years.

In our lives,

In our meditation practice,

We experience constantly the changing nature of mind and body,

And of the outer nature and outer world.

We have our own periods of lightness and darkness,

Activities and inactivities,

Our own moments of colors,

And our own moments of darkness.

It is true that we experience storm of varying intensity and violence in outer world and in our own minds and bodies.

We are also buffeted by the high winds,

By cold,

By rain,

And we endure the periods of darkness and pain,

As well as the moments of joy and upliftment.

Even our appearance changes constantly.

Experience is a weather of its own.

Through it all,

The inner mountain just sits and remains its essential self.

Continue to sustain this inner mountain-like space.

Continue to sit here with resolve and dignity,

With groundedness,

And allowing the clouds of thoughts and emotions and sensations and these words to come and go as the mountain sits here,

Unwavering,

Remaining majestic,

Beautiful,

Strong,

Without even trying to be strong or beautiful or majestic.

And thus,

By becoming a mountain in our meditation practice,

We can link up with its strength and the stability and adopt them for our own.

We can use these energies to support our own energy to encounter each moment with mindfulness and equanimity and clarity.

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

All 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 not to be denied,

It is to be encountered,

Honoured,

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 and wisdom.

The mountain has these to teach us and much more if we can let it in,

If we can continue to remain mountain-like.

Continue to be mountain in your meditation practice and link up with its strength and stability.

And as you see it here,

We resolve with ease,

Allowing the thoughts and clouds to come and go,

Allowing the emotions,

Storms to come and go.

Continue to sustain this mountain-like meditation,

Mountain-like being,

One moment at a time,

One breath at a time,

And sustaining the strength.

So if you find that this resonates with you in some way,

With the strength and stability of the mountain as you are sitting,

It may be useful then to use this from time to time in your meditation practice to remind you of what it means to sit mindfully,

With resolve,

With wakefulness,

In true stillness.

So for a minute or two,

Continue to sustain the mountain meditation on your own in silence,

Moment by moment.

So sitting in mountain-like posture and assuming yourself as mountain is in many ways similar to silent illumination or open awareness practice,

Where it provides a framework of strength and stability of your own being.

So allowing this meditation to merge,

Continue to remain open and aware with strength and dignity and resolve.

And knowing that it's very natural to you,

These characteristics of your being are there,

And they're just to be felt.

And mountain is like a mental exercise to re-familiarize with the nature of our own being,

How it remains in all the changes untouched,

Unwaivered,

Unperturbed,

With enormous strength and dignity.

Mountain just sits.

From your face to the back of your head,

To your neck and throat,

To your shoulders and arms and hands,

And through to your entire torso,

The hips and legs and the feet.

And when you feel ready,

Gently open your eyes.

.