Welcome to Mountain Meditation.
For this meditation,
You may choose to sit with a straight back,
Your head held erect on your neck and shoulders,
Allowing the shoulders to fully relax,
And place your hands on your knees.
Or you may choose to lay back flat on your back,
On your bed or the floor,
Feeling the earth support your body.
Take a moment to get comfortable.
Gently close your eyes and bring your attention to the flow of your breathing,
Feeling each in-breath and each out-breath.
Just observing your breathing without trying to change it or regulate it in any way.
Allowing the body to be still and 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.
As you sit here picturing in your mind's eye as best you can,
The most beautiful mountain that you know or have seen or can imagine.
Just holding the image and feeling of this mountain in your mind's eye,
Letting it gradually come into greater focus.
Observing its overall shape,
Its lofty peak high in the sky,
The large base rooted in the rock of the earth's crust.
Its steep or gently sloping sides.
Noticing how massive it is,
How solid,
How unmoving,
How beautiful both from afar and up close.
Perhaps your mountain has snow at the top and trees on the lower slopes.
Perhaps it has one prominent peak,
Perhaps a series of peaks or a high plateau.
Whatever its shape or appearance,
Just sitting and breathing with the image of this mountain.
Take a slow deep breath.
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 mountain in your mind's eye become one.
So that as you remain here you share in the massiveness and the stillness and majesty of the mountain.
You become the mountain rooted in the seating posture.
Your head becomes the lofty peak supported by the rest of your body.
Your shoulders and arms the sides of the mountain.
Your buttocks and legs the solid base rooted to your chair or the floor.
Experiencing in your body a sense of uplift from deep within your pelvis and spine with each breath as you continue.
Feeling a little more of breathing mountain,
Unwavering in your stillness.
Completely what you are beyond words and thought.
A centered,
Rooted,
Unmoving presence.
Now as you remain 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.
Through it all the mountain just sits experiencing a change in each moment.
Simply 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.
Just abiding all change.
Take a slow deep breath.
In summer there's 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 and shrouded in clouds or fog or pelted by freezing rain.
People may come to see the mountain and comment on how beautiful it is or on 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.
The mountain's magnificence and beauty are not changed one bit by the people who see it one way or another or not by the weather.
In 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 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,
Experiencing a weather of its own.
Take a slow deep breath.
The breath lift the lungs on the exhale,
Relax the lungs in the low belly.
By becoming the mountain in our meditation practice we can link up 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 feelings,
Our preoccupations,
Our emotional storms and crisis,
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 a deeper silence and stillness and wisdom.
Humans have this to teach us and much more if we can come to listen.
Take a slow,
Deep breath,
Fully inhaling,
Slowly,
Fully exhaling.
Allow the face to relax.
Allow the jaw to relax.
Take another slow,
Deep breath.
Gently bring awareness back to your fingertips,
Running the thumb across the tip of each finger,
Slowly wiggling your fingers,
Becoming aware of movement in your hands and body.
Becoming aware of the sounds in the room.
Take another slow,
Deep breath.
And on the exhalation,
Gently begin to open your eyes with a new awareness and resolve.
Namaste.
May you find peace and happiness as you travel through this journey of life.
