By Jon Berry
I recently began meditating on the commuter train into
work. It wasn’t 
a
practice I sought out. But my work situation changed and I'm working in the city again. Rather than give up starting the day with 15
minutes of silence, I decided to see if meditation is transferrable. It is.
While my preferred meditation spots are still my screen porch – where, this time of year, I can look out onto tulips, daffodils, and forsythia, and hear the whistle of birds – or a worn, wooden bench in my Quaker meeting, the “Hudson Line meditation center” carries its own, idiosyncratic benefits.
Putting down the newspaper, tuning out the Blackberry, and
turning within, in the midst of a crowded train of rustling newspapers,
tap-tapping keyboards, and muffled conversation, has given me a glimpse into
things that are obvious to an outsider, but are easy to lose sight of when you
do them every day. That I’m in motion. That I’m with other people.
That, when I stop my busy-ness, I can see
and hear more, and feel grounded -- even when going 60 m.p.h.
I’ve also found anew how porous the boundary is between the
spiritual – that great force that breathes life into us – and the rest of life. In the meanderings of the mind that often accompany the first
phase of meditation, my mind wandered one recent morning to an upcoming business trip to California. I thought
about what I planned to say in the presentations I’d be giving…then about what
was most important to say…then about the
issues my clients are facing…then about the human consequences of their companies' success or failure.
This led to thoughts about the people I’d be seeing…how a
colleague with small children was doing, and a colleague who grew up in China
under Communism and was now here and working for my company…about what a
strange and wonderful world we’re living in today.
whether my 82-year-old Dad would be out on his 50-year-old tractor on his
centuries-old farm – and I smiled. Then I came back to breath, as always, after my thoughts have carried me momentarily away, and recentered into my meditation.
This idea that the spiritual is always hiding in the non-spiritual parts of our lives is 
what Thich Nhat Hanh is getting
at in the idea that “a dandelion keeps our smile.” The most mundane parts of
life, he says, can bring us into “profound
communion with life.” Hanh, whom I've been reading on the ride in, writes about waiting in the airport and washing the dishes, but it could as easily be the commuter train or a staff meeting.
To Hanh, spiritual practice begins with breathing and smiling. Like the little revelations that come when we focus consciously on what we’re doing, it’s a deceptively simple idea. We all breathe. We all value moments of joy. This may seem like Buddhism Lite – something Hanh gets occasionally dismissed as. But in context of the practice of engagement in the world that the Vietnamese monk advocates – the “inter-being” that led him and other monks out of their temples during the Vietnam War to attend to the victims of bombings and strive for peace – it is the most serious of spiritual work. I love this quote from his book Peace Is Every Step:
“Our smile affirms our awareness and determination to live in peace and joy. The source of a true smile is an awakened mind.”
I love the words he chooses – “determination” is such a fierce word; the linking of smiles with “an awakened mind,” the decision to live in peace and joy.
If we don’t cultivate a practice of being conscious of our presence in life, the fact of life is like the wonders of the Hudson River that fly by while our noses are buried in the newspaper – there, but not there.
“Real strength is not in power, money or weapons but in deep, inner peace.” -- Thich Nhat Hanh
To learn more about Peace Is Every Step, or to buy a copy, please click on this link:
For more on Thich Nhat Hanh:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thich_Nhat_Hanh