Find a comfortable seat.
Visualize a mountain.
Make it as vivid as possible.
Imagine yourself becoming this mountain.
Your legs and hips the base.
Your shoulders and head the peak.
Noticing your breath.
Breathing.
You're in unwavering,
Stillness,
Centered,
Rounded,
Unmoving presence.
As you sit here,
Become 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 teems with life and activity.
Streams,
Melting snow,
Waterfalls,
Plants,
And 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 being itself.
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 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 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.
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 and beauty are 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.
At times visited by violent storms,
Buffeted by snow and rain and winds of unthinkable magnitude.
Through it all,
The mountain sits.
Spring comes,
Trees leaf out,
Flowers bloom in the high meadows and slopes.
Birds sing in the trees once again.
Streams overflow with the waters of melting snow.
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 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 our 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,
Experiencing a weather of its own.
By becoming the mountain in our own meditation practice,
We can link up with the strength and stability and adopt them 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 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 the deeper silence and stillness and wisdom.
Mountains have this to teach us,
And much more,
If we can let it in.
So in the time that remains,
Continue to sustain the mountain meditation on your own in silence,
Moment by moment.
Begin to wiggle fingers and toes and slowly blink your eyes open.
Much love everyone.
Namaste.
