Stillness

"Let Your Mind Settle, Like a Clear Forest Pool"

A ceiling fan. A sparsely decorated room. The play of light throughout the day. Shadows cast across pale walls creating shapes, silhouettes, faces I imagine. The falling rain. The tumbling snow. Clouds moving in rapid motion or slowly outside my window. The sight of these things and more. Naked trees. Trees in bloom. A shimmering moon. Birds twittering at break of day, squirrels chasing, running up and down. Neighbors coming and going. Car doors slamming, car alarms sounding. Neighbors talking, dogs barking. To lie and look, watch and listen, take it in and let it out - if this is what it means to be still and meditate, then I have been practicing my whole life.

This way of seeing, hearing, absorbing the world came to me as a gift, came to me as a little girl in Puerto Rico. My grandfather had very little, practically nothing. He made everything he slept on, ate on and sat in. He made it from mahogany and cane. When I was very little there was no TV, only a small radio that we would listen to while he fried home killed chicken beneath a bare bulb in his kitchen. He took a rest every afternoon, either in his hand made mahogany bed or in a hammock that was strung across an empty room. I have a picture of me sitting atop his belly at a few months old in his hammock made of bed sheets. It was my introduction to the world of witnessing time as if in slow motion. And it has never left me. As a small girl I slept in a mahogany bed covered with mosquito netting;  necessary most of the year in Puerto Rico. Windows in the Caribbean have shutters, no glass so at night in bed images came to me through a gauzy haze. Colors of neon blue from a distant Hotel sign flashing across my white tent. Sounds of music and dancing from the disco's on the Condado. A neighbors barking dog. And the jokes and laughter of my family from the other room. Lying in bed, I would hear and see all of these things and let them float over me like soft feathers wafting on my skin. I would take it in and let it go and in this way drifted off to sleep.

I have always loved to lie and look up at the sky and trees. When, as a teenager my grandfather moved in with us, he brought a hammock that he strung between two trees in our backyard. After he finished his afternoon siesta I would take over, lying in his red hammock and look up at the leaves on the trees for what seemed like hours - never wanting to come inside. Even now, I lay on the grass in our backyard with dogs on either side and the cat, now gone, atop my chest. Chris will lie parallel with his head resting on my lower belly. The whole fam-damily looking up, watching the sky change from day to night. We do it here and in Cape Hatteras. But in Cape Hatteras we have divine sky and amazing Pelicans and other bird-life to watch throughout the day. When Vladymir was alive he would come join me in the hammock each afternoon while I read the paper, swinging back and forth with me, purring and happy. 

I have lived in many places. Apartments, group houses, individually and married, and in every house each room speaks to me with its play of light and color depending on time of day. It is soothing to sit or lie and take in the sounds of the room, the house and everything in and around it. I have Monks and Buddha's in my house and gardens now because when I start to think too much I can look at their pleasing demeanor and be reminded of the beauty of serenity and stillness. As we get older and are no longer clean slates, it becomes harder to go that place of egolessness. These figures are my helpers and bring me back to "empty mind."

Stillness was part of my grandfather's world. He was a teacher of mathematics, a gardener, a reader, a player of domino's and a drinker of good Bacardi rum. But in the middle of the day when people were at work hustling and bustling my grandfather was either in his hammock or in his bed reading, listening and just being present.

Never underestimate the power of lying down and letting go, or sitting in stillness at some point every single day in each room of your house or outside in your yard, alone or with your pets.