Dashboard Puja
I walked several blocks extra on my walk home because I felt the need to be outside after a long and busy day, and I encountered these little buddhas on the road.

I walked several blocks extra on my walk home because I felt the need to be outside after a long and busy day, and I encountered these little buddhas on the road.

The ubiquitous exhortation to love that we find in so many spiritual teachings does not, I think, require us to love the individual as an individual. Loving an individual particularly requires liking, and liking is an idiosyncratic thing and as with all tendencies and preferences is much out of our control, even though acquirable to some extent. The love exhorted as a spiritual practice and aim to be possible must be that of the universal, of what is common, even if the only thing that is in common is the fact of being.
As I was walking to work and passing through the park on the north side of the Capitol, I saw this young woman first doing pranayama and then settling into meditation.
I do not know whether this is her neighborhood or where she works or whether she is in town as a tourist or to petition her elected officials. What I do know is that whether this is home or a new and different place and whether she was pausing before play or work, her reactions to all around her will likely be deeper, steadier, and brighter for having paused to meditate.
If you have not yet sat for meditation today or otherwise practiced in a way that brought you to the center and essence of your being, I invite you to start or renew your practice today. You might not have a half hour or an hour, but no matter how busy you are, you have 10 minutes.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Mark Dion, “The Field Station of the Melancholy Field Biologist, Storm King Art Center