2017 is my year of practice. I set a goal to meditate every day in 2017 and so far, so good – I have meditated every day since December 20, 2016.
Meditating every day means that I practice in a lot of different places. Often before work at the office, or at our Shambhala meditation center downtown; and when I travel I pack a meditation cushion so that I can get in my daily session in the hotel room. My practice has varied since I learned to meditate back in the ‘90s, but it’s never been as consistent as this 2017 daily practice.
On the weekends, I sit at home. Sometimes, I take advantage of Jim going to Mass to sneak in alone time at home for a nice long sit. “Alone time,” except that we have dogs.
As Jim says, dogs loathe a closed door. I’ve come to peace, then, with meditating with our two dogs, and in their time and way, they’ve come to peace with it, too. It took a few sessions and here is how it goes.
I pull out from the cedar chest my favorite meditation cushion and the pad upon which it rests. I arrange the cushions and then myself in a corner of the room. Each dog inspects, out of their firm belief that it is their duty to know everything that occurs in the house. I set the timer and adjust my body and settle into the cross-legged posture that will enable me to sit unmoving for my practice session.
Then the action begins. One by one, the dogs wander over to me, expectantly waiting for a word of love and a caress. I give neither and they are confused. They wander off into another room only to return. Murphy, our big boy, curls up right in front of me, his back touching my right foot. Meanwhile through my awareness of them I periodically return to my breath, the meditation technique I was taught those years ago.
A sound outside sends them both rushing indignant to the window ready to drive away marauding intruders … but it is only neighbors walking by. Now it’s Molly’s turn. Molly, our standard poodle, is as sensitive as Murphy is obtuse. She stands in front of me. And just stands facing me. I become aware of how I must appear to her, stern, ungiving. Did she do something wrong to elicit my behavior? Imperceptibly, I allow my body to relax. I allow the unintended sternness to dissolve and be replaced by utter gentleness. Imperceptibly, I think, but Molly perceives the shift in me. She wanders away, curls up on her blankie, sighs deeply, stretches out.
“While I was meditating, I was thinking,” the old meditator’s joke goes. Between those periodic returns to my breath when I notice myself thinking, I consider that their anxieties, their rushing off to see what is outside the window, their relaxing into staying here and now, are all reflections of my own mind. That is just what I do when I meditate. I flit about my own mind seeking entertainment, comfort, any comfort, even if it is comfort in reveling in righteous indignation. I see that my posture of seeming sternness engendered anxiety in Molly, and that my relaxing into utter gentleness created soft space for her. It created soft space for me in my practice, too. The three of us sit, together.
“May all sentient beings enjoy happiness.” After meditating, I contemplate this line of a standard Buddhist prayer. Are we really all this tied, tied by these commonalities? And then, I return to the cushion and do it all over again.
• Michelle Bonnet Hale is a member of the Juneau Shambhala Center.
