David Schiller - See Your Way to Mindfulness: Ideas and Inspiration to Open Your I

see your way to mindfulness

Ideas and Inspiration to
Open Your I

Written, illustrated, and photographed by

David Schiller

WORKMAN PUBLISHING NEW YORK

For B.B.

Contents

Introduction

In meditation, we sit and breathe and try to still our minds to experience the moment, and only the moment. Even then its almost impossible, as a steady and random stream of thoughts clamors for our attention.

And once were off the meditation cushion? Forget about it. Its as if society has fashioned a world whose sole purpose is to distract us from the here and now. On the one hand, our culture works relentlessly to expand its control over nature, filing down every little burr that might irritate our experience of being alive in the world. On the other, it appears weve developed a collective phobia of being un-entertained. Television, sports, movies, music, video games, the Internet, social mediawe now live amid an endless rabbit hole of temptations to get lost in.

Presiding over all of it is the phone. Perhaps nothing so insidiously severs us from reality than our beautiful, responsive, indispensable smartphones. They amuse us when were bored, guide us when were lost, connect us when were lonely, answer us when were curious. All of which sounds so positiveuntil you sit down to dinner and notice that half the table is checking their email. Or attend a concert, and see that large swaths of the audience are texting, tweeting, or taking pictures. Or go for a hike and discover your companion is snapchatting. Instead of experiencing the experience, were documenting the experience. Or escaping the experience. Or sharing the experience. Anything but the experience. (Though this is not meant to scold. Every photo in this book, for example, was taken with an iPhone.)

Some centuries ago, a man asked the eccentric Japanese Zen teacher and poet, Ikky, to define the highest wisdom. Ikky wrote one word: attention. The man couldnt quite get it and asked again. Ikky again wrote attention. This went on once more until the man, exasperated and annoyed, said, What does this attention mean, anyway? Attention means attention, Ikky replied.

It couldnt be simpler: The meaning of life is to pay attention, to see. Open your eyes. Reality, that which is before you, is where you live.

See Your Way to Mindfulness is about coming back to the here and now, with the presence that we call mindfulness, through the practice of intentional seeing. It is about relearning how to come face-to-face with the realrelearning, because it is something we knew as children. Seeing is like meditation in its directness, and like meditation it requires that we hit pause, slow down, try to let go of the endless stream of thoughts, and just focus on whats in front of us. And in the same way that meditation needs to be taught, seeing needs a little help because were losing the ability to do it. Seeing isnt really looking, and its not watching. All day we look or we watch; both activities are passive compared to active seeing. Its a little ironic, actually. As our world becomes more and more visual, we are inundated with gorgeous images to look at, and yet we are increasingly impoverished in our direct relationship with the world, especially the natural world. The immediate world of trees and flowers and long stretches of beach have so much to teach us, once we stop and take a real look.

The aim of See Your Way to Mindfulness is to encourage the reader to discover the joy of seeing, and through it, find a more balanced, mindful way of being. There are quotes from Buddhists and artists and philosophers extolling the importance of seeing. And there are prompts or exercises that encourage the reader to see for him- or herself. These exercises are not so much about creativity as about where creativity starts; theyre about taking us back to our beginners mind, so that we can discover the world afresh, with new eyes, and revel in the miracle of the everyday.

The first step...
shall be to lose the way.

Galway Kinnell

Exercise 1

sit still and look until the you disappears

Henry David Thoreau was great at sitting still. He could be a spectator watching an ant war for eight hours straight, or sit all morning on his front step at Walden Pond, watching the sun climb overhead. Hunters and fishermen do this, too. They find a spot in the woods or a stream and hold still for so long that they blend into the natural surroundings. This also has the effect of sharpening their powers of observation. Try it yourself, in the woods or at a park or, like Thoreau, at a pond. Theres always some kind of wildlife around, birds or squirrels or frogs. Sit until you become part of the silence. Chances are a bird wont land on your shoulder, but a butterfly might. Then seeor hearwhat the world is like without you in it.

Just sit and watch the river flow, and the world will slowly reveal itself.

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

Aristotle

This is your world; it is your feast.... Look at the greatness of the whole thing. Look! Dont hesitatelook! Open your eyes. Dont blink, and look, looklook further.

Chgyam Trungpa

... I am doing something I learned early to do, I am paying attention to small beauties, whatever I haveas if it were our duty to find things to love, to bind ourselves to this world.

Sharon Olds

Rose hip.

Exercise 2

look for what is changing (p.s. everything changes)

Were all told to live in the moment. And yet we all walk down the street or drive along the road, and it all looks the same as it did yesterday and will tomorrow, and we scarcely pay attention. So what is this magical moment? Well, try to imagine what wont be the same tomorrow. That certain slant of light. The mood youre in right now because of a dream you had. The way a light breeze is chasing away the morning humidity. Thats the moment. To paraphrase the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, you can never step in the same river twice. Does it matter? Thats like asking, Does life matter?

Some things change right before our eyes, others change over years. Or centuries.

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.